


Epilogue: What Came After

by tersa (alix)



Series: Dragon Age:Dacia [2]
Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age II
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, F/M, Post-Game(s), Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Suspense, Wordcount: 30.000-50.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-01
Updated: 2011-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-22 18:39:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 37,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alix/pseuds/tersa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“We vanished into the hills and circumstance eventually forced us all to leave the Champion’s side. Well, all of us except for Fenris, of course."</i>
</p><p>Fenris has expressed his undying love to Hawke before charging off to confront Meredith in the Gallows...but what are those circustmances Varric so blithely glosses over so, and what happens to Fenris and Hawke after the 'happily ever after'?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on livejournal starting at: http://fic-of-thedas.livejournal.com/24551.html . Based on my first Dragon Age 2 playthrough.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fleeing Kirkwall north through the Vinmarks in early winter, Fenris is having difficulty adjusting to being 'in a relationship'. Hawke admits the nightmares she's having to Fenris. Hawke and the companions decide where to go next in their escape.

Fenris woke, brought to alert consciousness by Hawke whimpering. Out of long habit, his arm stretched out to find the hilt of his sword, the time it took enough to assure through his other senses that there was no imminent danger threatening. The sounds coming from the camp were becoming his new normal—Varric’s faint snores, someone turning in their sleep, the sentry shifting their weight from one foot to the next. Even Hawke’s nighttime distress, although it never failed to wake him.

This sleeping with someone thing was still far too new, even though it had been weeks since they’d fled Kirkwall. Winter had fallen hard in the Vinmarks, and there was no question that any one of her friends—their friends—would not be sharing a tent. The deep cold made it a matter of survival. Survival also involved not strangling one’s tent mates, and so Fenris had found himself matched with Hawke, Aveline, and Donnic—unwilling to share a roof with either the mage or the princeling who seemed to watch Hawke too moon-eyed. Sebastian, Varric, Isabela, and Merrill existed in an uneasy détente, mostly through Hawke’s efforts to prevent the camp from burning down to the ground or attracting the attention of the templars searching for them.

Hawke jerked in her sleep, and he reached to wrap his arm around her, pulling her close. Tension buzzed through her muscles. He frowned and released his hold, only to have her back arch suddenly as she cried out.

That brought a flurry of activity. Donnic and Aveline woke with a start, both reaching for the knives tucked into their backpack; from the other tent, there were muted exclamations and the sound of movement. Gritting his teeth with embarrassment at her disturbing the entire camp, Fenris shook her. “Hawke, wake up.”

Her eyes snapped open. “What—“ she began to ask, cut off by a sudden grimace. Scrambling out of the blankets, she clawed open the flap to the tent and rushed out, letting in a gust of snow-laced air, leaving Aveline and Donnic looking at him with matching bewildered expressions.

“Are we under attack?” Merrill’s voice came from outside.

“No, Kitten,” Isabela replied, “usually the big men with swords are a strong indicator of that.”

“Hawke?” Sebastian asked with concern.

With a heavy sigh, Fenris vacated the warm cocoon, grabbing his cloak and Hawke’s from the top layers to swing over his shoulders, and exited the tent followed by Aveline. Three of their group were shivering in the cold morning air, the sun just beginning to lighten the mountains to the east, glinting faintly off their drawn weapons. Isabela, cloak wrapped around her and boots on, must have been standing sentry. It was Aveline who said, “Another nightmare, I guess.” She threw a glance at Fenris, and when he didn’t correct her, she continued. “We might as well get started. I don’t think any of us will be going back to sleep.”

“Speak for yourself,” Varric grumbled. “I was having a lovely dream involving a warm mug of cider and Norah dandling on my knee. I could easily go back to that.”

“With Bianca right there in the tent with you?” Isabela teased. “I’m scandalized.”

Fenris left the bickering behind and went searching for Hawke. He found her in the area they had set aside to use as a privy, one hand curled into a fist as she leaned against a tree trunk, the other pressed flat over her belly, the smell of vomit mingling with the rest of the effluvia. He had never fully understood the phrase ‘green around the gills’ until he saw her face. Wordlessly, he offered out her cloak, and when she didn’t move to accept it, put it on her himself. She shivered, her hand moving up to clutch it closed at her throat.

“I wish I could stop having these dreams,” she said in a tired voice. “I thought they would just go away, but they’re not.”

“I know.”

“It’s Anders,” she blurted out.

He stiffened, and had to control the impulse to activate his runes. “What about him? He’s dead.”

“No, really?” she cracked, but exhaustion made it bitter. “I keep dreaming about him. Stupid stuff, at first, but he always turns into what he looked liked when Justice—Vengeance,” she corrected, the word acid coming off her tongue, “had control over him. And it makes me sick, remembering all of it.”

“You did the right thing,” he said. “What he did was an atrocity that required an equal punishment. You gave him what he asked for.”

“Yes.” Her laugh was strained. “ _He_ doesn’t have to live with what he did, does he?” She scraped a hand through her sleep-tousled hair. “I’m sorry. I feel like death.” Shivering, she stepped in to lean against him. “Can we go back to camp so I can put more clothes on? Or maybe shoes? I’m _freezing_.”

A corner of his mouth turned up at the plaintiveness of her tone. He briefly wrapped arms around her shoulders, feeling her chill seep in. “Yes, let’s move on.”

Before they could, the clang of steel on steel sounded from camp, followed by a boom of thunder. They started to run back without hesitation, Fenris sparing one moment to feel a pang of concern for her, as he always did when they rushed into a dangerous situation, before he shoved it aside. Opening himself to the power of the lyrium tattoos helped,; it burned away distractions as it filled his veins. The world around him faded into a bluish haze as he phased, Hawke becoming as insubstantial as the trees he dodged.

He burst into the clearing of their camp and in the time slowed feeling of combat adrenaline, made a quick assessment: ragged looking humans in piecemeal armor, several of them already down. Identifying one nearby wielding a crude pole-axe in clumsy strokes, Fenris rushed her, raking his hand through the woman’s midsection and giving a yank. Screaming, she dropped her weapon and fell to her knees. Isabela appeared from nowhere to slit the woman’s throat. A brief exchange of locked gazes in acknowledgement, and she darted off, leaving Fenris to claim the pole-axe and sweep into the fray, gutting two more and seriously injuring a third as he scythed his way towards Aveline and Donnic, fighting back to back behind their shields. Motion caught the corner of his eye, and he whirled, only for his attacker to skew sideways from the force an arrow and a crossbow bolt punching through his breastplate. No time to waste on that, he was moving again, cutting the legs out from under someone who turned to face the new threat, terror on the man’s face before he went down as one of Merrill’s spells slammed into him.

It was over within a few more paces, a handful of remaining bandits losing their stomach for fighting and fleeing down the path they’d traveled the night before. Fenris started to give chase, but Hawke spoke, bringing him up short. “Let them go. They’re not worth the effort.”

It _was_ an effort not to ignore her and follow them, and he gripped his purloined weapon tighter. “They could lead others back to us,” Sebastian pointed out, giving voice to what Fenris was thinking.

“They might,” Hawke agreed, walking towards one of the steaming corpses with her daggers at the ready and studying it. “But look at them: these are ill-equipped and ill-fed people. Most likely they’re fleeing Kirkwall, just like we are.”

“But not as capable,” Varric added in understanding.

“Exactly.”

“But that doesn’t mean that if there are more of them, they can’t overrun us,” Aveline pointed out grimly.

Hawke flashed her a smile. “What, you think the Champion of Kirkwall and her stalwart Companions can’t defeat the mighty horde?”

Aveline shot back, “Do you want to try that without a healer?”

That sobered Hawke quickly, and she paled. “No, you’re right.” She shook her head. “We should get moving. Bodahn, is everyone alright?”

“Yes, messere,” the dwarf’s voice came out of the trees preceding the emergence of Bodahn, Sandal, and Orana.“Although I’m afraid breakfast might be ruined.”

Varric groaned, but Hawke said, “I’m sorry, Bodahn, but we’ll have to eat on the trail now anyway. Orana, Sandal, pack your things, we need to move.”

Merrill piped up, “I’ll go forward and begin laying a false trail.”

“Good, Seba--“

Sebastian interrupted her with a sigh. “Yes, I’ll help her,” he said before he slung his bow over his shoulder and the two vanished in the trees.

Hawke turned to Isabela and opened her mouth to speak, but Fenris touched her arm. “Whatever it is, it will wait on you putting warmer clothes on.”

She startled. “Oh, right.” She looked down at herself, then tossed the borrowed daggers aside before moving towards the tent, Fenris and Isabela watching her go.

“Is she okay?” Isabela asked in undertone once Hawke had disappeared within the tent.

Residual anger flared as he remembered Hawke’s admission. Something he wouldn’t share with anyone else. “Are any of us?”

Isabela laughed quietly. “No, I guess we’re not. Here we are, deep in the Free Marches during the middle of winter, freezing our asses off, just because we happen to like her. I think we’re all as mad as Meredith, especially me. But,” she continued, “that’s not what I meant. I saw the way she ran to the privy. Is she ill?”

His shoulders jerked up and down in a shrug. “The dreams are not allowing her to sleep well. She does not seem ill otherwise.”

She grunted. “Good enough, I guess. We should probably get going as well.”

It took only a short time to prepare to move out. They’d only been on the run for a few weeks, but they’d learned quickly, with help from Merrill and Sebastian, how to travel light. Varric grumbled at how uncomfortable he was, Bodahn lamented no longer having his cart, and Orana was next to useless for any but the simplest tasks, but they all recognized the hardships were preferable to the alternative.

Merrill and Sebastian returned from their work just after everything was packed up and ready to go, grabbing mugs of hot tea Orana had waiting for them and travel rations from Bodahn.

“Hawke, I think we should be making for Starkhaven,” Sebastian said.

With a grin, Hawke said, “We already are.” There were grumblings among the rest of the group, with hands fumbling into pouches to pull out silver coins and dropping them into her outstretched palm.

Sebastian watched this in puzzled disbelief. “What’s that all about?”

“We wondered how long it would take you to ask for that, Choir Boy,” Varric replied.

“You _bet_ on me?”

“Of course we did,” Isabela said breezily, slipping her hands back into her gloves. “I thought for sure you would’ve brought it up sooner. You’ve disappointed me,” she added, pouting.

“I had faith in you,” Fenris said.

“Thank you, Fenris.”

He smiled. “I was sure you would avoid it much longer.”

At the princeling’s glare, the corners of Fenris’s mouth turned up in a wry smirk, much to the laughing amusement of the rest of the party.

#####

They stopped in the hills above Starkhaven, the mid-afternoon sun shining weakly against the snow filling the vale in which it was built. They left Bodahn, Sandal, and Orana behind in a small clearing, gravitating after Hawke who followed Sebastian, out to the edge of the tree line to look down on it.

“Are you ready?” Hawke asked him.

Fenris came up to her side, a possessive hand resting at the small of her back, which she neither acknowledged nor shied away from. It did earn him a sharp glance from Sebastian. Understanding passed between them, and with it, a slight dip of Sebastian’s chin before he answered her. “As ready as I’ll ever be. Are you sure you want it to happen this way?”

“Yes. Your return should upset everyone enough that we’ll be able to enter the city without much notice during the uproar, which is exactly what we need right now.”

Sebastian shifted on his feet uneasily, snow crunching under his boots. “I don’t like leaving you here.”

She put a hand on his forearm, which stilled him. “I know. But the Free Marches are in chaos. Starkhaven needs its leader, and what better person than a Vael to bring hope back to their people. And you’ll do me—us—the most good by being a trusted voice who knows the truth of what happened in Kirkwall. Don’t let the crazy Meredith did spread, Sebastian.”

Again, Sebastian caught Fenris’s eye and the nod he gave before stepping back, allowing Sebastian to catch Hawke up in a hug, face momentarily buried in her shoulder. “I won’t. I promise you. You’ve been a good friend. All of you,” he said, stepping back to touch shoulders and hands to the others crowding around him. “I wish---“ He stopped himself and shook his head. “May the Maker watch over you all.” He turned on his heel and began his walk towards Starkhaven, shoulders squaring with determination.

Fenris watched him go, and re-claimed his touch at Hawke’s waist. “What now?” he asked, voice pitched low.

She shivered and leaned towards him. “We move camp.”

“We just got here,” Varric protested.

Hawke gave him an apologetic smile. “I know, but we need to be somewhere Sebastian can’t find us.” She began walking back to retrieve her former servants, beckoning them to follow with a gesture of her hand.

“Do you not trust him?” Merrill asked, startled.

“No, I trust him,” Hawke said, weaving her way through the trees parallel to the tree line away from where they’d left Sebastian. “But I don’t trust the templars who might get to him.”

Aveline sounded troubled when she asked, “Do you really think they’d lay hands on the Prince of Starkhaven?”

Hawke snorted. “A Mother assassinated the heir of Kirkwall. Meredith was insane. Would you really put it past them at this point?”

“No, probably not,” Aveline admitted, but sounded uneasy for it.

“Do we get to go into the city at all?” Varric asked plaintively.

Hawke smiled again, wryly, but looked to Isabela, who nodded, “Right. First thing tomorrow.”

Varric watched the exchange warily, then turned back to Hawke. “Where are we going?”

“I…haven’t decided yet,” Hawke replied. “But none of you are obligated to go with me. If you want to part ways when we get to Starkhaven, I’ll understand.”

“Bloody well unlikely,” Aveline retorted. “You’re stuck with us, Hawke. All Kirkwall has proven to me is that you _need_ a babysitter.”

“I’m with you, Hawke,” Merrill piped up. “I…don’t really have anywhere else to go.”

Varric sighed heavily. “I’ll probably regret this, but you’re the best story I’ve ever told. And I get the feeling you’re not quite done yet. I suppose you’re a given, Elf,” he said to Fenris.

Fenris’s mouth curled up into a smile. “Yes.”

Her steps faltered to a stop, everyone else following her lead and doing the same. She looked around to all of them with tears in her eyes. “Thank you, all of you. I don’t know what I would do without you, either.” Straightening again, she inhaled deeply. “So, tomorrow, Varric, I’d like you to go into town and find us somewhere to stay. Like the Hanged Man, except even seedier.”

“Lovely,” Donnic muttered under his breath.

Hawke threw him a smile and went on. “Somewhere we can lay low for a day or two and no one’s going to ask questions.”

Varric rubbed a hand across his chin. “And somewhere for Merrill to stay that won’t draw attention. Sorry, Daisy,” he said to her, “but a Dalish in a human tavern is going to get noticed, and that’s the last thing we need right now. Do you think you could stay in the Alienage?”

Merrill sighed. “What’s one more elf, you mean? I don’t like the idea of being separated from the rest of you.”

Isabela chuckled. “I promise I won’t let her leave without you, Kitten.”

Giving Isabela a hopeful smile, Merrill said to Varric, “If I must, I will.”

“Right,” Hawke said as she slid her pack from her shoulders. “Let’s get started, then.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian has returned to Starkhaven as Prince as a distraction at Hawke's behest so they can slip into the city without notice. Isabela goes off to do mysterious things, the rest hide out waiting for her. Fenris confronts Hawke about Isabela's whereabouts and what her plans are. They take ship to their next destination.

As Hawke had predicted, the city was buzzing in the wake of Sebastian’s return. Word had long ago reached them of Sebastian’s survival in Kirkwall, and years of mismanagement by his cousin had made the nobles more than ready for a change of leadership. The news had trickled outside the walls in the intervening day, and people from the nearby freeholds, with idle time thanks to the winter off-season and attracted by the promise of fireworks of one sort of another, lined up at the gates seeking entrance. Hawke and her companions were just one more group of gawkers, although the elves, two tattooed, were more remarkable as they entered separately. Fenris breathed a sigh of relief as the guards, in an uncharacteristically cheerful mood, waved him by without comment.

They found Varric right where he said he would be, a couple blocks in and over. He looked relieved as they approached and clasped hands with Fenris briefly, for show. “The Alienage is this way. I found a family with enough awe of the Dalish that they said they would be honored to host one for a few nights. I’m sure the silver helped,” he added with an amused snort. He looked sidelong up at Fenris. “You’re still insisting on staying with us?” When Fenris merely looked back at him, he sighed. “Fine. Put the hood of your cloak up, then. At least the weather is cooperating there.”

It wasn’t quite as cold this close to the sea, but the wind blew dampness straight through even the heavy oiled wool of a cloak. Fenris was grateful for the excuse to pull the hood low over his face, although he fretted his lack of visibility in case they were attacked.

Fortunately, they were not, and Merrill and Orana were dropped off without mishap. Varric set off at an angle away from the Alienage, the roads becoming more twisted footpaths through buildings so dilapidated, Fenris wondered that they still stood. The warren eventually opened up into the kind of squares that served as gathering places, probably hosted merchants in more clement weather, but at the moment was deserted. What life there was seemed to emanate from the largest structure, a squat two story building with hanging sign of a grey fish. “The Fish Market,” Varric explained, catching sight of Fenris’s puzzled look under the edge of his hood. “It’s ah...well, you’ll see. It was the best place I could think of to hide us. People here aren’t going to be interested in the other patrons.”

When he pushed opened the door, Fenris understood why. “You could have just said it was a whorehouse.”

“She _did_ say seedier,” he said defensively.

“Ahhhh, Bartrand,” a middle-aged, sensibly dressed woman swept up to them, preventing him from replying.

Fenris quirked a disbelieving eyebrow down to Varric, who shrugged, embarrassed, before fixing a smile to reply. “Madame Jasmine.”

“Is this the last of your group? Excellent, excellent. I will have a meal prepared and sent up to your rooms.”

Fenris noticed she was trying to catch a glimpse of his face and turned slightly to obscure it even more. Varric, catching the shift, took the madam’s hand and kissed it. “You’re a jewel among women. Are Violette and Glory comfortable?”

“Well, they are a little more crowded in Buttercup’s room than they were expecting...” she began. On cue, Varric pressed his other hand against hers, and Fenris caught a flash of gold. “But I’m sure they’ll make do. Will you be visiting them later?”

“I might, I might,” Varric demurred. “If there’s time after I get back this evening. Let me take my friend up to the room and we can discuss it after our meal.”

“Of course, how rude of me. I hope you find your stay comfortable, messere,” she said sweepingly to Fenris, who merely nodded in acknowledgement.

“She has a reputation for being discreet, but she simply can’t understand that we don’t want to take advantage of the services,” Varric said in undertone as he led Fenris up the stairs. The hallway was narrow, and the sounds coming through the walls were...blatant. Fenris felt a flush of warmth work its way up his body, and he ached with suppressed reaction by the time he entered the door Varric opened.

It was a little quieter inside, although not by much. Through the muted sounds of the business being transacted, Aveline was speaking. “I don’t like the idea of him going out on his own.”

“Don’t worry,” Donnic said. “I’ll be fine.”

“This again?” Varric asked, sighing.

Aveline whirled on him. “Yes, ‘this’ again.”

“I thought we’d decided he’d probably get more information without his wife hovering over him like a mother hen?”

“I am not a mother hen!” Aveline protested hotly.

“No,” Hawke interrupted, “but your very presence attracts attention and you’re terrible at small talk. Sorry, Aveline, but it’s true,” she added with a smile to soften the bluntness, then teased. “We remember when you were courting Donnic.”

Varric snickered and even Fenris smiled at the memory of Aveline’s copper marigolds, and “Nice night, for an evening,” was enough to send Hawke into peals of laughter even now, years later. Aveline blushed an unsightly red. “That was different.”

“No, it really isn’t, love,” Donnic said, smiling as well, but it was gentle. “I’m good at blending in. You are not.” He kissed her. “That’s part of what I love about you.”

She harrumphed, glowering, but desisted in her arguments. Smoothing his shirt collar, she said, “If you don’t come back, you had better be dead, because if you aren’t, _I_ am going to kill you.”

He chuckled, but any further discussion was paused when there was a knock on the door. Varric answered, allowing a scantily clad elf boy to enter bearing a large tray of food covered with a threadbare, graying cloth. There was no table in the room, only a bed little better than a raised pallet, a shelf with a candle for light, some pegs on the wall for clothing, and a three-legged stool, but he balanced the tray on the latter without missing a beat. A copper exchanged hands, and the boy scurried out, throwing only a brief look of curiosity at Fenris and Hawke’s cloaked figures.

It was a plain meal, some sort of tuber soup with the faint flavor of unidentifiable meat, hard black bread, and small beer, but it was plentiful and warm, and they ate their fill for the first time in weeks. Varric belched happily and stood. “Does anyone need anything else before I leave?”

“Other than to get out of here?” Aveline asked drily.

“Just imagine Choir Boy in this place. Then again, I might pay to see that.”

Aveline retorted, “I’d pay money to trade him.”

Next to her, Donnic slipped an arm around her waist, and she turned to look at him as he spoke to her in a low voice. Sensing his opportunity, Varric beckoned to Hawke and Fenris, leading them out of the room to one a door down from it. “You’ll be sharing this one with me. Sorry,” he added, stepping over the threshold. It was laid out identically to the first, except a few dried, dark flower petals lay scattered around the candle. “I thought it would be less conspicuous if there was at least one person coming and going from here.”

“That’s fine, Varric,” Hawke said, removing her cloak and hanging it on a peg. “We’ll just be a little cozy in here, that’s all.”

“Don’t worry, Bianca doesn’t take up much space and she’s housebroken.”

Fenris chuckled. “Then she might be one up on Hawke.” He yelped as she swatted at him.

“I’m going to head out and see what kind of information I can dig out at the taverns,” Varric said, pulling his coat around his shoulders. At this, Hawke fished in her belt pouch, and Varric paused until she’d passed him a fistful of coins, some of them gold. “This will help. Don’t get into trouble, you two,” he said with a smile for Hawke. “I’ll knock when I return.”

Fenris watched him leave, an eyebrow lifting. “That was confusing.”

“Was it?” Hawke murmured with a sly grin, stepping in and throwing her arms around his neck. She was warm against his body, leaning in to kiss him. “It seemed pretty clear to me.”

Heat coursed through his veins, his hands straying to her waist despite his wariness. “He could return.”

She kissed him again, lingering, until his pulse quickened and her breathing turned noisy. “He’ll be gone until the money is,” she said when she pulled back a little, her fingers creeping up to slide into his hair, causing him to tremble at the delicious sensation. “And I gave him more to make sure that will be awhile.”

A corner of his mouth went up in a smile. “I have to admit.” His hands slid, one to the small of her back, the other lower, over the curve of her hip, and he enjoyed the widening of her eyes in surprise. “The choice of rooms has given me ideas.”

“Ideas?” she asked mischievously.

With a growl, his mouth met hers, and things went blurry as desire engulfed him. He wasn’t quite sure how it was he was stripped of his clothes, or how they came to be on the bed, only that need drove him, the weeks of deprivation exploding to the fore in the lust-saturated environment of the brothel, and that she matched his urgency. One moment stood out to him, her open to him, driving deep inside, filling her, when she arched her back and cried out in ecstasy, candlelight gilding the sweat sheened skin of her breasts and belly before release took him in deep, wracking shudders.

Muzzy awareness returned when she shifted under him, enough so he slid away from pinning her, onto the straw mattress. She clutched his arm before he could entirely clear her, keeping him half-sprawled across her, touching, entwined.

He came to with a start some time later, when she rose to dress, the candle burned down considerably and guttering. She lit a new one from the remains of the old and he watched her appreciatively, silhouetted by the flame. The hard weeks in the mountains had pared her body of what little excess flesh she had, and naked, he realized how painfully thin she’d become. Too thin, in his opinion, but that should correct itself now that they’d returned to lands where hot food was readily available--all of them could do with a few more good meals. She dropped her tunic on, the hem of it brushing her thighs suggestively, and he rose from the bed, crossing the floor to come up behind her and skim his fingers under that edge.

She laughed and slapped his hands away as they skidded over her hips. “Again? We can’t expect Varric to stay away _forever_.”

“I could hope,” he replied, laying his palms flat on her bare skin and hooking his chin over her shoulder.

She leaned into him and released a heartfelt sigh. “I could hope,” she echoed. Her hand reached back to cup the back of his head, and he closed his eyes. “I’ve missed you.”

He reveled in the sensation of just _being_ with her for several minutes, until she shifted against him. He tilted his head to kiss her shoulder, and let his hands drop to instead encircle her waist. “So, where are we going next?”

“To bed?” she hazarded with a smile.

He pinched her, earning a yelp and a laugh. “No. I mean, where did Isabela go? What are you planning?”

She stiffened in his arms, and annoyance flashed through him that he worked to suppress. Pulling away from his grasp, she turned to face him. “She’s finding us passage on a barge. Not her preferred method of travel,” she commented with a wry smile, “but it’s quicker than walking, especially this time of year.”

“A barge?” he asked, puzzled. “To where? Antiva?”

Hawke shook her head, reaching for her trews to pull them on. “Downriver, to the coast.”

Watching her dress and feeling discomfited at confronting her naked, he found his pants to follow suit. “And then?”

“Hopefully, her ship will be there.” He made an exasperated sound, and she glanced over at him sharply. “What?”

“I understand not wanting to let Sebastian know where we are. But I am going with you, no matter where that may be. You promised me strange places,” he said, with a sudden smile at the memory. “Why are you so reluctant to share your plans?”

“I’m sharing, aren’t I?”

“As much as the Arishok did.”

She flushed with the annoyance twisting her expression. “Ferelden. I’m going to Ferelden.”

“The Dog Lords,” he stated, surprised.

She scowled. “I grew up there, you know.”

He brought his hands up, placating. “I know. But you said, once, that you were quit of the place.”

“I was. But then Kirkwall was quit of me.” She dropped to a seat on the bed, curling her fingers over the edge, and he sat next to her lightly, half-turned to watch her as she spoke. “The Chantry has never had a tight grip on the country. It’s part of why my parents fled there. I need time, and a safe place, to figure out what their reaction is going to be to...” She trailed off and swallowed hard, and he felt the specter of Anders worm its way into the room, chilling him further.

“All the stories speak of your origin,” he pointed out. “They may think to look there, first.”

“Maybe,” she acknowledged, but her jaw set. “There will be risks. But between the Chantry’s lesser presence and familiarity, against venturing to a place where the Chantry may be strong and I have no obvious allies...it’s a risk I’m willing to take.” Her gaze came up to meet his. “I was serious about what I said yesterday. If you wish to leave--“

She got no farther than that before he was bringing up a hand to put a hushing finger against her lips. “I will not leave you.”

She curved into his side, wrapping an arm around his waist so that he put a hand around her shoulders, squeezing her in. “Good. Because I really don’t want you to.”

#####

It took a few days for Isabela to find a barge with the space available to transport such a large group of people together at this time of year. Varric and Donnic spent most nights in the taverns gathering the current gossip, while Aveline, Hawke, and Fenris took to playing Diamondback and Swords in Hawke’s room.

“Sebastian has told his story,” Donnic relayed one afternoon over his breakfast. “The soldiers have started talking about it, wondering what kind of ill omen it is for the Chantry being destroyed and what the reaction of the Divine is going to be. The destruction of the Tower here is still fresh in their minds.”

“No news of any templars coming into town yet,” Varric added. “And that’s something my card playing companions would hear about, possibly even before Choir Boy.”

Hawke let out a sigh, squaring her shoulders. “Maybe our luck will hold and we’ll get out of here unremarked.”

It seemed that would be the case, as there was still no news of pursuit when Varric brought word back. “She’s found one. We leave early tomorrow.”

The trip down the river was uneventful, perhaps even boring, if it hadn’t been for Hawke developing seasickness the first day on the water. Isabela remarked, “We’re not even at sea, Birdie. You’re going to be wishing for death when we are.”

She didn’t exaggerate. On the larger ship, all of them got sick except, oddly, Varric, but all of them recovered long before Hawke did, who spent the weeks on board retching up nearly every meal. “I tried arguing her out of a winter crossing,” Isabela confided to Fenris, watching Hawke bent over the rail with Merrill holding her hair back against the whipping wind. “The sea is a bitch this time of year, and only going to get worse when we get closer to Denerim. But she insisted that if it was that bad, the templars would think twice about considering we’d take this route or making the crossing themselves.”

“She’s probably right,” Fenris said, looking on with concern.

“Yes, but at what cost?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They arrive in Denerim in late winter and take a breather in their flight. Hawke lays low and with little else to do, sleeps a lot. Fenris takes to going out to the taverns at night, until the templars try to capture him in a trap. The companions prepare to flee once more.

The ship limped into Denerim after several weeks, delayed by being blown well off course during a particular nasty squall and losing the main topgallant mast to boot. Varric fell to his knees and kissed the ground of the docks. “I’m never getting on a ship again. Maybe my ancestors had it right after all.”

“So you’re ready to give up your merchant empire to me?” Isabela teased.

Varric put his hands out to her, shushing. “Now, let’s not be hasty.”

Fenris breathed deeply, happy as Varric to be back on land, then wrinkled his nose at the foul odor. “What _is_ that smell?”

Aveline sniffed at the air. “Boiled cabbage.”

“And wet dog,” Merrill chimed in.

“Money,” Isabella finished happily.

“Messere,” Bodahn interjected, dry washing his hands nervously as he trundled up to Hawke. “Begging your pardon...”

With a smile, Hawke waved a hand at him in a shooing motion. “Go, go. Let me know what you find out.”

“Hawke...?” Fenris trailed off quizzically.

“Later,” she said, then groused, “The ground is moving. Why don’t they warn you of this before you get on the boat?”

“That’s why you never get off them, Birdie,” Isabela said with a grin. “Varric...?”

“Already on it,” he replied, pulling Bianca out of her case to sling over his shoulder and disappear down the docks.

“And while he finds you accommodations, I know of a nice little tavern in the Market District called The Gnawed Noble. I expect Donnic and Aveline will want to set up there, and it’s not far from the Alienage,” she said to include Merrill and Orana in a glance.

Merrill perked. “I have to admit, I’m looking forward to visiting it. It’s so fascinating to meet new people and see the differences between them.”

Fenris’s mouth twisted into a grimace as they fell into step behind Isabela’s lead. “And I’m sure it helps that you’re viewed as nigh unto a god.” Merrill’s face fell, and Hawke dug her elbow into his ribs, glaring. Grunting with pain, he wrapped his arm across his chest to cover the spot with a hand and made a face at Hawke before saying to Merrill, “I apologize.”

“Oh, it’s okay, Fenris,” Merrill said. “I know how you have to make everyone else unhappy when you’re unhappy too.”

“I am not unhappy,” he protested.

No one had anything to say back to that, so they walked through the streets on a slight uphill climb. From behind him, Aveline pointed out a few visible landmarks, such as Fort Drakon and the Palace, but then she said with quiet awe, “It looks so different.”

“It does,” Hawke agreed grimly, and at Fenris’s puzzled look, she said, “The Fifth Blight hit here about six years ago. You heard the stories, right?”

“Some,” he admitted. “I was running from Danarius when it happened, and by the time I met you, it was over.” He walked in silence for a few steps then asked, “You were here for that?”

She shook her head. “No, not when the Archdemon led the darkspawn against the city. But at the beginning, Carver and I came here to enlist in King Cailan’s army, before Ostagar. Maker, we were so _naive_ ,” she said, rubbing at her forehead with her fingertips.

Aveline said in a hushed voice, “We all were.”

Hawke looked over her shoulder to give Aveline a crooked smile. “You didn’t know Carver long enough. No, he was _really_ naive.” Fenris heard the pain in her voice and gripped her shoulder, a gesture she acknowledged with a touch to his hand before they both dropped them. She jerked her chin to Fort Drakon, “The stories say the last two Wardens in all Ferelden slew the Archdemon there, on that tower, and survived.”

“I wonder which one it was?” Fenris mused, earning a sharp look from her. “The Old Gods were worshipped in Tevinter, a long time ago.”

“I sometimes forget...” Hawke trailed off, then shook her head. “We need to find out what else we’ve missed.”

“We know, Hawke,” Aveline said reassuringly. “We’ve talked this to death on the ship. Maker,” she sighed, then inhaled a deep breath, “it’s good to be doing something again.”

The Gnawed Noble was precisely where Isabela remembered it to be, a one-story building on the main round of the Denerim marketplace, part of a bustling hub of mercantile activity. “Varric will love this place,” Fenris commented with a smile, until he spied a weathered dwarf outside calling, “Dwarven crafts, finest in all of Orzammar!” and added, “Maybe not.”

“I’ll show you were the Alienage is,” Isabela said in undertone to Merrill and Orana, leading them away.

Fenris wrinkled his nose, earning a shoulder bump from Hawke. “You do that every time, you know,” she said.

“What?”

“As if you’re smelling something bad anytime someone says the word ‘Alienage’.”

“In this case, I am.”

She sighed. Aveline grinned and opened the door to the tavern.

Inside, tables lined the walls, a bar in the back, a private room off to the left and a hallway leading to rooms for rent to the right. At this time of day, they were doing passable business, about half the tables occupied by singles, duos, trios and quartets, some of whom looked over when the four of them walked in. _Three humans and an elf walk into a bar_. It sounded like the beginning of one of Varric’s terrible jokes. Most of the patrons looked back to their drinks and companions, leaving only the bartender to eye them speculatively. Aveline picked a table near the bar, and a serving girl wandered over with a dimpled smile. “What can I get for you, dears?”

“Two ales,” Aveline said.

“Wine, if you have it,” Fenris added.

Hawke said, “Mead for me. And something to eat that isn’t hardtack or salted pork.”

“Ahhh, just come into port,” she said with a cheerful wink. “Coming right up.”

When she departed, Fenris prompted Hawke, “So, Bodahn…”

A frown flickered across her face. “He’s looking to get to Orlais, but he’s agreed to help us for a while longer before he heads that way. He used to be a merchant here in Ferelden, traveling with the King during the Blight, if his tale is to be believed. He knows the roads, and it won’t look out of place for guards to accompany and protect him.”

“Us?”

She nodded. “If necessary. He said it might take a while to find a good price on a cart and oxen and make an agreement with one of the merchant families to carry their goods. Varric’s going to be helping with that.” She paused as the serving girl approached the table with their drinks, sliding some coppers across that disappeared into her belt pouch before she took herself away. “In the meantime,” she continued, “as long as word hasn’t reached here, we can stop for a while and recuperate. We might even be able to hide here. There’s enough people, what’s a few more?”

“It depends on what they’re looking for,” Fenris pointed out, jaw set. “In my experience, I tend to stand out.”

Her gaze went to her glass of mead, and Aveline spoke up to relieve the awkward silence that fell. “You do, and there’s nothing we can really do about that except to minimize notice.”

“You mean hide,” Fenris said.

“No,” Donnic said, coming to Aveline’s assistance. “But at least not draw attention to yourself, or to see if we can work it so if you do get noticed, we find out about it.”

“That means you should probably remove those,” Aveline noted, with a gesture towards his wrist.

Reflexively, Fenris wrapped a hand around the red sash, turning defensive. “Why?”

Aveline said, “Because they stand out. The shield especially, I mean, flames, it has the crest on it, but all of Varric’s stories talk about the red wristband you wore while you were getting your head on straight.” He glared at her, but she went on regardless. “What? It’s true. And it’s red. It draws the eye.”

Any retort he might have made was interrupted by the serving girl returning with food, and everyone fell silent while they ate. Varric sauntered in as they were finishing up and glanced about, sizing the place up, before joining them. “I’ve arranged for a place to stay for the three of us,” he said, taking Hawke and Fenris in with his gaze, then to Aveline and Donnic. “And a few leads for you two. Soon as you’re done here, I’ll show you where.”

Hawke pushed back from her seat, Fenris noticing she’d hardly touched her food. “I’m ready now.”

“I’d like some more time,” Aveline said, with a glance at Donnic before returning her attention to Varric.

“Sure,” Varric said. “I’ll come back for you two. Ready, Fenris?”

He rose slowly from the bench, still unhappy. “Lead the way.”

#####

Varric escorted them to an establishment called The Slippery Eel. Fenris sighed. “Another whorehouse, Varric?”

“She said seedy!”

As it turned out, word had yet not reached Denerim of what had happened in Kirkwall and, on strict pain of Bianca’s dismemberment, Hawke had forbade Varric from spreading the story. Bad enough they’d started circulating from Isabela’s crew, but there were no names attached to who was involved. Their group breathed easy, getting on with their lives while they waited for a reaction Hawke was certain would come. It would inform what she did next.

A little money came in after Isabela sold the remainder of Castillon’s non-perishable cargo, “free beer” as she called it, and promptly used some of the profits to do just that at The Pearl, as well as to help finance their stay. The days passed--one week, two--and everyone began to relax. A certain level of complacency set in as the time marched on without incident.

Aveline and Donnic managed to sign on with the city guard, which helped monetarily as well as giving another avenue of information gathering. Orana got a job waiting tables at a tavern in the Dregs, and Varric made himself a regular at The Gnawed Noble, continuing his older stories of Hawke’s deeds in the Free Marches while keeping an ear to the ground. Merrill happily found a place to stay in the Alienage and started working with the herbwoman, learning her craft in exchange for what, Fenris supposed, was surreptitious magicking. That left Hawke and Fenris cooling their heels, trying to stay out of sight.

Fenris was restless. He’d enjoyed days or even weeks while on the run from Danarius’s hunters where he’d been able to stay in one place, but this…this had a different feel from that time. Then, it had just been himself. He’d stopped, gotten sloppy after a time, tired of being chased. Taking down the hunters was a trial to be survived, but one he had confidence that he could. They were a certainty and therefore predictable, to an extent. Now, he had Hawke to worry about, and no idea how the templars would strike back. Staying in one place this long, no matter Hawke’s assertion that they should be safe until spring, made the back of his neck itch.

That she continued to have nightmares didn’t help. Every night, she woke up one, two, more times a night in a terror that awakened him as well, and did not rest well when she was asleep. With nothing else to do except hide and wait, she’d been sleeping longer--earlier in the evening, later in the morning.

He’d done as they’d asked and stopped wearing the red wristband and Hawke’s crest at his waist when he took to going out at night, prowling the back alleys and darker taverns, where they only cared what color your coins were and had the strength to keep it. A few unfortunate thugs had thought the sword an affectation, an elf weak, and they no longer frequented the establishments, there or any other place.

Winter was giving its last gasp when the templars found him.

A prickle ran down his spine as he walked into the Dog Bone, a sensation he remembered well even after six years. No one looked up, the bartender refused to meet his eyes. Someone had sold him out. In a blink, he sidestepped and willed his runes to life as six men with the order’s inverted red sword emblazoned on their breastplate rushed in, attempting to trap him. They glowed in his phase-shifted view, and he went cold. Fresh lyrium ran through their veins, hampering his abilities as much as any mage’s.

He drew his sword and lashed out, the enchanted dragonbone slicing through steel like paper and laying open one of the men, tossing two others back into their brethren. In a flash, he followed their motion, pommel coming up to strike one in the face as he recovered from being off balance, ducking as one swiped a longsword where his chest had been. Behind him, he heard the second squad of templars he’d anticipated breaking through the back, trying to close the trap, and he dropped to his hands, and swung out a leg, taking down the two blocking the doorway, then regained his footing to half-crawl, half leap over them out to the alley beyond.

Feet pounded after him, and his breath rasped loudly in his ears as he ran through the rabbit warren of Denerim’s darkened streets, grateful for the weeks he’d had to learn them. Jumping, he grabbed onto the low hanging eave of a hovel and hoisted himself up, resuming his escape leaping lightly from one ramshackle roof to another in a direction perpendicular to the alley he’d been running on until he reached an end to the buildings. Willing his breath to silence, he listened. He could hear raised voices from the direction he left, but nothing on the street below. He let himself drop off the side noiselessly and made his way as quickly as possible back to the Slippery Eel.

Business was booming, so Fenris slipped in through the servants’ entrance, making his way up the stairs to the room he and Hawke shared. She was asleep, as he’d expected, a candle flickering fitfully on the table near the bedside, awaiting his return. Her skin looked nearly translucent, veins a faint spider web under the surface, dark shadows a permanent feature around her eyes. He almost felt guilty putting a hand to her shoulder and shaking. “Hawke, wake up. The templars are here.”

She woke up with a terrified gasp, blue eyes nearly electric in the candlelight. He recoiled, shocked by the lack of reason, the animalistic quality of her expression. Then it was gone, her hand going up to scrub through the stubble of her shorn hair. “Templars?”

“They found me at the tavern. It was a trap.”

“Too soon, too soon,” she muttered, lurching up from the mattress to begin stuffing things into the travel sacks. “Go to the Pearl and find Isabela. Tell her it’s time.”

“What?” he asked in confusion, anger flaring.

“There’s no time, to explain” she said. “We have to get out of Denerim. Meet me at the Alienage.” She shoved his backpack at him, slung hers over her shoulder, then grabbed him behind the neck and kissed him fiercely. Despite himself, he shivered, licking his lips when she pulled apart. “Don’t die.”

They made their way down the servants’ stairs and out the back, his hand brushing down her arm as she left him, heading towards the Market District. He went the other direction, down one alleyway to what passed as a street in this quarter and turning to another one to find the Pearl.

Isabela was in the front room, a knot of men around her, her daggers out and flashing in the light. She laughed, dancing out of the way of one man’s clumsy lunge with a cutlass, a dagger tip flicking out to pop a button off his pants so they fell down to his ankles, much to the roaring delight of the onlookers. Catching sight of Fenris across the way, she made a cutting motion with her hand. “Take a break, boys, I need to take care of some business. Drinks are on me.” Another cheer went up and in the hubbub, Isabela slipped through the crowd to him. “What is it?”

“Templars,” he said under his breath. “Hawke says it’s time.”

Her brown eyes widened, sorrow washing through her features. “Dammit. I’d hoped to say good-bye.” Her hand snaked around his head and pulled him in, and for the second time in a very short span of time, he was being kissed hard. She grinned when she broke away. “Always wanted to do that. Take care of yourself, Fenris. Take care of her.” She was gone before he could react, still stunned from the embrace. Up onto a chair she climbed, one booted heel thumping on a tabletop. “Listen, boys, plans have changed. A pirate’s life is never an easy one, and Johnny Law is hot on my tail,” she said with a suggestive hip wiggle. Catcalls rang out from the crowd. “The Red Blade leaves tonight. Any sailor man enough to keep up with me, follow along, for booty and adventure!” She hopped off the table and another roar went up, men clapping and hooting as they bobbed in her wake. Fenris suspected many of them would wake up the next morning wondering what in Andraste’s name they were doing on a boat in the middle of the sea, but that wasn’t his problem. The fact that Hawke hadn’t told him her plans, again, was.

He trailed after the line of men streaming after Isabela, peeling off the pack to head towards the Alienage. Aveline and Donnic were at the gates, gazes sweeping the streets nervously. Donnic nodded when he spied Fenris and nudged Aveline, who slewed her attention over to nod to him as well. He had just reached them when Hawke came out with Merrill.

“Is she gone?” Hawke asked Fenris.

He glared at her. “On her way. And where are _we_ going?”

“South,” she said. “At first light, once the gates open. The family Merrill is staying with has agreed to put us up for the night. We’ll meet up with Varric, Bodahn, and Sandal on the road.”

As they walked into the Alienage, Fenris glanced over to Donnic. “I would have thought you and Aveline would stay.”

“Might have,” he said, “but we were on patrol down by the docks when the templars showed up. One of them was from Kirkwall and recognized Aveline.”

“Wouldn’t have stayed anyway,” Aveline said grimly. “Denerim holds too many memories for me.”

Donnic reached over and squeezed her wrist, which she acknowledged with a brief twist of her hand to touch his before it fell away. “We took down some of them before we got out, so there will at least be a few less on the trail.”

“Until word spreads among the templars here in Ferelden,” Hawke interjected.

Fenris tugged on her elbow, holding her back a little as Merrill led them through the streets to a door tucked into the corner of two tall buildings. Under his breath, he said, “Why didn’t you tell me about your plans with Isabela?”

“This is a bad time, “ she said in a clipped voice. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow, okay?”

Exasperated, he growled. “Fine.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's early spring, and they escape Denerim. Hawke admits a secret she's kept from Fenris.

They got out of the city the next morning thanks to Aveline and Donnic’s time in the guards. “Hawke had us looking for weak points in the defenses during patrols,” Donnic explained under his breath to Fenris on their way to a tall house where the roof reached nearly to the parapets. “Walls like this are made to keep people out, not in.”

Fenris filed away yet another piece of information he hadn’t known and bit his tongue.

Outside of Denerim, Hawke stopped them in a copse of wood the road curved around to avoid, the slight rise giving them a view of both approaches while they waited. Donnic and Aveline took the side closest to town while Hawke went to the other, Fenris on her heels. She dug into the pouch at her waist for rations, pulling out a round of trail bread and breaking off a small piece before offering some to him. He waved a hand, declining, and gave her a steady look. “You are keeping secrets again.”

She startled, nearly choking on her bread, having to muffle the sound in the crook of her elbow. He waited while she recovered. “What do you mean?” she croaked when she was able to stop coughing.

Anger made his words curt. “Varric. Bodahn,” He waved a hand towards the city behind them. “Isabela. Why did you not tell me of any of that?”

She seemed taken aback by his answer and considered her words before replying. “You mean their roles in our escape?”

He swore in Tevene, frustrated. “Yes, their roles in our escape,” he said through gritted teeth.

She looked down at her hands splayed in the air before her, then tucked them under each other, hugging herself against the chill. “I did it to protect you. All of you,” she amended. At his exasperated snort, she glanced at him sidelong, emphasizing her haggard appearance. “If none of you knew everything, then you wouldn’t be able to reveal it to the templars if they caught you. You could probably have guessed at Isabela, but she’s the decoy anyway; she’s supposed to be obvious.”

“And what of you?” he pressed ruthlessly. “If they’d captured you, then all of us would be lost.”

Her expression twisted with grief, and she nodded. “Maybe. I trusted the rest of you to find your own, best ways out if that happened.”

Growling, he grabbed her shoulder and squeezed hard. “I would not have left you behind.”

She loosened a hand to brush fingertips across his grip. “I know. I would have wished you to, though. If I had...if I am caught,” she corrected herself, looking far out to the horizon, “I’d rather do it knowing you’re free.”

“What good is my freedom without you in it?” he snarled.

Her hand left his to disappear under her cloak once more. She glanced down at her feet, scuffing one against the hard packed earth, then up and over to him. “I’m pregnant.”

He jerked his hand from her as if burned, taking an involuntary step away. “What?” He turned his head quickly to see if anyone else had heard and spied Aveline and Donnic conversing quietly on the far side of the ridge, Merrill and Orana huddled together under a tree with their heads together.

Hawke was going on, weariness heavy in her voice. “Merrill thinks--“

“Merrill?” he asked harshly. “Merrill knows?”

She had the grace to blush, the color staining her pale cheeks an ugly, hectic red. “She was working for an herbwoman. I went and saw her once, to try to get help for the dreams. She told me it wasn’t the dreams, but being with child.”

Shock negated all thought in his mind. “Who is the sire?” he blurted out, emotional reflex taking over.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, bitterness filtering into the usual sarcasm he expected from her. “There were so many men there before we left Kirkwall.” Though her fist was ungloved, it still hurt when she punched him in the kidney. “You, you idiot. Who else’s could it be?”

“Sebastian,” Fenris said irrationally, then with teeth clenched, added, “Anders.”

She stared at him. “You _can’t_ be serious.”

“You dream of him,” he shot back, looking to wound.

“I can’t help what I dream,” she scoffed irritably. “I used to dream about you all the time, and I hadn’t been with you yet.”

“So does that mean you wanted to be with him?”

She glared. “No!”

She fell into silence, which Fenris was grateful for. More than the dull ache in his side occupied his reeling thoughts. Such simple words she’d said, but he had trouble comprehending the concepts. Sire. _Him_.That was nothing he’d ever imagined, never even _considered_ it might be something he’d be someday, what with fighting and the being a slave and escaping and running for his life for so long, then holed up in Kirkwall, waiting, until Danarius showed himself and he ripped the man’s heart out of his chest. Now, he was on the run again, this time with her. Hawke, and his feelings for her, had been surprise enough. But that was sex, and Hawke. That there might be consequences to those…

After a time, she said, “Look, I know this is a lot for you to take in. I’m not going to push you on it. When you’re ready…” She trailed off, and lifted to her toes to curl a hand around the back of his head, brushing a kiss across his lips. “We can talk more.”

He did not yield to the kiss, holding himself stiff in her grasp, and she sighed with sorrow as she rocked back on her heels. Before they could speak further, a soft whistle filled the clearing, and they turned to find Aveline beckoning them. “Wagon’s coming,” she said, and Hawke trotted over to check it out. Fenris turned her back on them, keeping watch on the southern approach.

“I couldn’t help but hear my name,” Merrill said from his shoulder, and he whipped a scowl at her. She gave him a crooked little smile in return, her elbows tucked in the opposite hand across her torso. “What did I do now?”

“Nothing,” he spat.

“I like it when I do nothing,” she said with amusement. “It means it’s easy.”

“You knew about Hawke...” he trailed off, unable to even give voice to it.

“I ‘know about Hawke’ a lot of things,” she said with equanimity. “Is there something in particular you’re referring to?”

“Forget it, mage,” he muttered.

“Is it about the baby?” she asked brightly. “Are you happy about it?”

“No.”

Merrill looked at him in shock. “Why not? Don’t you want it?”

“No,” he answered automatically, then snarled again. “I don’t know.”

She nodded gravely. “I’m not surprised. Among the clans, a child, _any_ child is a great blessing from the Creators.” She sighed. “It’s so different among the humans. So many of them, unwanted children, like Feynriel with his father. It’s so confusing.”

“I don’t care about your confusion,” Fenris said sharply.

Before she could respond further, Hawke touched his arm, letting her hand fall away before he could turn. “Bodahn’s wagon is approaching. We’ll meet them down on the road.”

He nodded swiftly. “Fine. Let’s go.”

#####

Their reunion with the dwarves was perfunctory. “Any problem getting out?” Hawke asked as they fell into step alongside the wagon.

“Easy as pie,” Varric said, seated next to Bodahn on the driver’s bench. “The guards were looking for a dwarf traveling with humans, not three merchants leaving with a cartload of goods. That was a good plan, Hawke. For once.”

She snorted bemusement, sounding something like her old self as she did so. “Thank Bodahn,” she said, looking up at him. “It was his idea.”

Bodahn preened under the praise. “Anything I can do for you, messere, I’ll do, for all you’ve done for the boy and I over the years.”

Hawke clapped her hand on Bodahn’s knee. “You’re a good man, Bodahn.”

Varric glanced over to the wagon’s other side and noticed Fenris’s glower. “What’s eating you, Elf? Having your morning brood?”

“Shut up, Dwarf.”

“Wrong side of the bed,” Varric muttered to no one in particular.

They traveled for the rest of the day, stopping just short of dusk to make camp in a clearing off the road, positioning the wagon to block the light from a small fire from the easiest view of the thoroughfare. Orana cooked, with the help of Bodahn and Merrill, Sandal gathered wood enthusiastically, and Hawke drew Aveline aside to talk in hushed voices with her, Aveline’s arm thrown over Hawke’s shoulder.

Fenris scowled and turned away from it, stalking out to a rocky area erupting from the earth outside the circle cast by the fire pit, drawing his knees up to wrap his arms around, eyes on the road. He heard a scuffle of boots in the brush as Donnic joined him, offering a mug of hot tea. Fenris took it with a grunt of thanks, wrapping his hands around it and letting the warmth seep into his fingers. Donnic settled on another part of the outcropping, sipping his tea companionably as the sun set behind the trees.

“I hear congratulations are not in order,” Donnic said as the last rays of daylight began fading.

Fenris grunted again, turning the cup in his grip. “What makes you say that?”

“Just that you’re not taking Hawke’s news very well.”

He shot Donnic a suspicious look. “When did _you_ find out?”

“Earlier today,” he said nonchalantly, ignoring Fenris’s tone. “But you’re not acting like an expectant father might at the news.”

“How _should_ I be acting?” he asked.

Donnic slid a glance at him. “Happy about it.” When Fenris didn’t reply, instead peering in the bottom of his mug to avoid meeting Donnic’s eyes, the man went on. “We can’t control when these things happen. You love her, don't you?”

“I…yes, I think so,” he said, stuttering over it. He did love her, didn’t he? He didn’t know what love was, except for maybe what Donnic and Aveline had. How he felt about Hawke didn’t feel like the easy camaraderie they shared. “So if Aveline were to come to you right now and say she was with child, you’d be happy?”

“Ecstatic,” Donnic said, taking a sip of his drink. “I’ve wanted one for years, but the Maker hasn’t blessed us yet.”

“Then maybe there is something wrong with me.” His knuckles cracked as he squeezed the cup. “I’m not happy about it.”

“Scared?”

The question struck a chord, and Fenris felt a twang of nerves shiver up his spine. Because it was Donnic, he muttered, “Maybe.”

“That’s understandable, in your position.”

Fenris looked up sharply. “What position is that?”

Donnic put a hand up. “You two haven’t exactly had a lot of quality alone time since you got together, what with fleeing for our lives and her feeling unwell. Maybe you should find some time to do that, now that we’re on the road.’

Barking a laugh, Fenris said, “Easier said than done.”

“Like having your friends clear out a patrol ahead of you so you can talk to her?” Donnic chuckled and rose to his feet. “I’m sure you can be twice as creative as Aveline. Maker help us.”

Fenris nodded, unable to find any humor in the memory at the moment, then offered a hand out towards Donnic. Donnic looked at it with mild surprise, but took it in a warrior’s grip, clasping forearms, before heading back to join the others.

A few minutes later, he heard a soft footstep he recognized, not looking around when Hawke claimed the spot Donnic had vacated. She held out a Ferelden coin in front of his face, that he uncurled a hand from his mug to take. “What’s this for?”

“A copper for your thoughts,” she said with an echo of her sly smile. He snorted bemusement and closed his fingers on the coin. When he didn’t speak, she gibed quietly, “That means you’re supposed to share them. I paid for them.”

”Where are we going?” he asked.

Her face fell. Tucking a heel up into a cleft in the rock face under her seat, she said, “South.” His gaze darkened when she paused, and she looked away, ashamed, adding, “To South Reach. It’s a holding on the trade road. I need to know if word has spread there yet, or not. If not, then I want to go to Lothering. It’s where I grew up, and off the beaten path and small enough and that we should be safe there. If word has spread, then the Brecilian Forest is no more than a couple days’ journey, and we can hide in there.”

His nostrils flared as he sucked in a breath. “I’ve heard of this place. Merrill’s people lived there.”

She nodded. “Yes. And I grew up with stories about it. People say it’s haunted. Even if the Dalish hadn’t lived there, no one wanted to go in there. Too many stories of people not coming back out again.”

“And you want us to go in there,” he said with disapproval.

“No, I don’t,” she said irritably. “But it’s an option, if things go pear-shaped. Why, do you have any better ideas?”

He felt heat creep into his cheeks as he flushed. “No.”

“Good. If you do, let me know. Food’s about ready,” she said and stomped off, leaving him to scrape a hand through his hair and follow.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris broods over the idea of Hawke being pregnant. They get news on the road to South Reach of the Chantry War progressing. Varric plays mediator. Ill-timed words drive a further wedge between Fenris and Hawke.

The journey to South Reach was uneventful. They saw few people on the road, winter’s grip still holding fast this far inland and close to the Wilds, but they let Varric do the talking with the few travelers they did encounter, all dwarven merchants.

Fenris spent most of his time...well, brooding. Maybe Varric was right about that. During the day, he walked alongside the wagon just as everyone else did, but listened as they joked and teased, telling stories of their childhood, remembering their adventures in Kirkwall. He had none of the former and no gift for the latter, so he remained silent, thinking of Hawke.

He was hers. He’d fought it for months, after that wild night of passion in the wake of Hadriana’s death. Then, he’d been afraid to admit it, either to himself or her. The thought of being bound to someone again, willingly, unstrung him. By the time he’d come to terms with it, he had thought it too late, and so proclaimed his loyalty through other means. They’d noticed, of course, the rest of them, but Hawke, oddly, never spoke of it to him, giving him, as she always knew to, his space.

Not until the templars and mages plotting against Meredith had taken him, did things change, and it was the look on her face when she found him that had done it. Anger mingled with fear leavened with relief as she’d touched him-- _touched_ him--as if to assure herself of his reality. He realized, then, that in all the time he’d stayed by her side...so had she with him. It had been difficult to say the words aloud, but easy, very easy to stay with her. The thought of losing her...his hatred for Danarius nearly paled by comparison.

But a child. A _child_. His fingers flexed and tensed on the strap of his scabbard. He knew of children, from the other slaves in Danarius’s household, but he had no recollection of being young. Of being a child. He was a slave, then he’d run away, and when he’d stopped running, he’d found Hawke. There had been no one, no time in his life for the _idea_ that he might one day sire offspring, no time to prepare for the concept.

Yet here she was, pregnant. His fingernails bit into the leather. They still shared a tent at night, but they did not speak to one another except for inconsequentials. She had not pressed him since that day outside of Denerim. He still didn’t want to speak to her about it, to admit he was afraid. All he had known before her was anger and fear and violence and death. She had taught him friendship, made him care about people, that touching...was not such a bad thing. And she’d told him of her father, of how kind and strong he was, how much her parents had loved one another, how much he’d loved his three children, gentle but firm.

How could he ever be that, with no memories of his own?

#####

As much news as Varric had collected, things seemed quiet ahead until they were about a day out. He came back from gossiping with the latest merchant, headed north, noticeably pale, waiting until the other wagon had giddyaped down the road before motioning to Hawke. Seeing this, Fenris walked up to join them, and Bodahn clucked the team into motion.

“The Ferelden Circle is in rebellion.”

Fenris hissed through clenched teeth, a surge of anger lighting up his tattoos.

“Turn the wick down, Elf,” Varric snapped in response, “unless you’re wanting to turn us into a beacon to the templars saying, ‘We’re here! Come get us!’” With a growl, Fenris clamped down on his reaction, and Varric continued. “Far as Agatha could tell, word reached the Tower and all hell broke loose. Maker only knows how many people died in the fighting, but the templars had to withdraw across the lake and have made the town there into their headquarters.”

“And so it spreads,” Fenris muttered darkly.

It earned him a sharp look from Hawke. To Varric, she said. “They’ll be more focused on the mages than looking for us, then,”

“Hah,” Varric snorted. “We should be so lucky. She said posters are starting to go up looking for the ‘Champion of Kirkwall’. She didn’t have one, but she’d heard about it. No mention of her companions, though,” he added, disgruntled.

Hawke smiled wryly. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Hey, I went to a lot of trouble to make up those stories. Least they could do is not leave us out.”

She laughed, something Fenris hadn’t heard out of her in long while. The thought hurt. She was saying, “But it may be you can still pass through town and not attract notice. We may need that.”

Fenris interjected. “I thought you said we came here because the Chantry didn’t have such a strong hold?”

Her smile faded, her gaze shadowed. “I did. I thought we’d get lucky.”

“Apparently not,” he muttered.

She shot him a look, but then turned it to the rest. “We’ll still stick to the plan. We’ll head for South Reach, then go from there. If nothing else, we need to stock up on supplies.”

#####

They stopped for the night as the clouds started building to the west, threatening rain. Bodahn guessed they would reach the town sometime in the afternoon, which was good enough for Hawke.

Thunder growled in the distance, matching Fenris’s mood. He pulled his fair share of watches over the night, but making camp, he was an extraneous body with Bodahn insisting on pitching Messere Hawke’s tent. He’d continued to pick an out of the way place to sit and think, nominally keeping an eye out for trouble while the rest worked.

Varric found him there--arms folded over his upturned knees, chin resting on his arms--and announced his presence by whapping Fenris upside the head.

Fenris rubbed at the injured spot gingerly. “What was that for, Dwarf?”

“For being an idiot,” Varric said, coming to stand in front of Fenris and hooking thumbs in his belt.

“In that case, why did you never do it to Merrill?”

“She’s a girl,” Varric said without missing a beat. “And a delicate little flower.” Fenris snorted. “And you don’t go around smacking blood mages upside the head if you like having things _inside_ your body.”

The smile Fenris gave him was wry. “Finally, a _good_ reason.”

Varric frowned. “That doesn’t change the fact that you’re an idiot. You’ve been broodier than normal, and that’s saying a lot for you.”

“Leave me alone, Varric.”

“No, I will not.” He reached out and grabbed the tip of one of Fenris’s ears between thick stubby fingers and pinched. Hard. With a completely unmanly squeal of pain, Fenris turned into it when Varric tugged. “You’re going to go talk to Hawke, now, even if I have to drag you over there.”

“Release me, Dwarf, or I will--”

“What? Do that magical fisting thing? That’s a bit extreme for simply wanting to avoid a conversation.”

Varric marched him through camp, and Fenris felt a blush creep up his cheeks despite everyone’s pointed attempts not to stare. Stopping before the tent, Varric swung a booted foot at his backside. “And don’t come out until you’ve worked things out, or you’re dead.”

“What about her?” Fenris said irritably.

Varric thumped him again. “If she’s dead, you better start running, because _I’ll_ find you. And I’m sneaky.”

Fenris shot him a sour look, then ducked into the shelter. Hawke was already lying down in the blankets, eyes closed. He felt his heart climb up into his throat at how vulnerable she looked. Settling next to her cross-legged, he peeled a glove from his hand to cover hers gently.

She stirred, blinking at him tiredly. Her hand closed, capturing his fingers against her palm. “Is it time to eat?”

“No,” he said, twisting a rueful smile at her. “Varric made me come in here to talk to you.”

“Oh,” she breathed, eyes shuttering. Withdrawing her hand, she levered herself up to a seat, mirroring his position. She folded her hands in her lap, and with a flicker of self-recrimination, he draped his across his knees. Once settled, she asked, “What about?”

Nervously, he glanced at her thickening midsection, then away.

“Ah.” She paused, a thoughtful expression crossing her features. “What would make it easier for you to talk about it?”

He twisted his hands at the wrist, palms going up in a gesture of, he realized, supplication. “I don’t know.” He shook his head then twisted his mouth. “I do not know what is expected of me.”

She looked at him with surprise. “You really don’t know?”

His lip curled in a flare of anger, and he forced himself to smooth it away. “How can I? I do not remember the man who sired me. Cannot even remember my mother. My sister was a stranger, until I ripped her heart out.”

Hawke blanched, then murmured. “I forget sometimes.” She reached out for his ungloved hand. His initial impulse was to tug it from her grasp, but she held steady, blue eyes meeting his, and he relented with reluctance. She was gentle as she drew it towards her, forcing him to lean in, and placed it flat against her belly.

It felt strange, an intimacy past anything carnal they had shared. The contours were... _wrong_ , from his touch memory, rounding out into his palm. Her hands covered his, holding his hand in place. “I was almost six when my mother told me I was going to have a little brother or sister. I remember how happy my parents were to be having another child, and I remember her doing this with me, telling me how the baby was growing inside of her. Then one of them kicked.” She smiled, and the sadness of it stung him. “Probably Carver. He never did pass up an opportunity to tell me how much he didn’t like me.” Tears glittered on her lashes, but didn’t fall. “I haven’t felt this one kick, yet, but Merrill says it should start soon.” One hand squeezed his wrist. “This is your child, Fenris. Yours and mine. And I want it more than anything I’ve wanted, since you. I wasn’t any more ready for this than you were. The world’s turned upside down, and this may be the worst possible time to bring a baby into it. But after all the death we’ve caused...maybe this balances it out a little.”

He frowned at her words. “The abomination?”

“Anders, yes,” she said hurriedly, brushing over it with irritation, “Grand Cleric Elthina, Varania, my mother, Bethany and Carver, on and on.”

The frown turned into a hint of a scowl. “I...do not know...” He trailed off, still unable to say the word.

She guessed it, and squeezed his hand gently. “It’s not like I’ve ever been a mother. It’s something I’m going to have to figure out how to be.” Her tone turned shy, adding, “I’d like you to figure it out with me.”

He considered her words then pulled his hand back slowly. Her face fell at the motion, but he reached up and cupped her cheek. “I do not know if I’ll be able. But...I will think on it.” He felt his throat threaten to close up before he said, “I do not care for the alternative, either. I don’t want to lose you.”

She kissed his palm, sending a shiver down his arm, then leaned into the touch. They stayed like that for some time, simply being, when a scratch came at the tent flap. “Excuse me, messere,” Orana’s voice interrupted. “But Bodahn said to let you know dinner is ready.”

“Thank you, Orana,” Hawke said wearily. For his ears alone, she said, “I guess this is something, at least.”

Fenris dropped his hand. “There is still time.”

#####

Later that night, Hawke stirred next to him, rousing him to wakefulness. Roused to more than that. She pressed against his side, shifting a leg thrown over his so that he was caressed by her inner thigh, an arm draped across his torso, the hand rubbing broken circles on his waist. Her breathing was quickened, the sound reaching his ears and his body responded. It had been a long time since they’d coupled, a long time since Starkhaven, with the illness and the dreams, then the exhaustion brought about by the child swelling inside her, and having her moving against him like this…. A muffled moan sounded deep in her throat, and he inhaled sharply through parted lips. He moved carefully, reaching across to cup her face, only to have her turn her head towards the touch, mouth brushing against his outstretched thumb. A shudder rippled down his body and he whimpered involuntarily, warmth rushing up from his groin to suffuse his skin. Emboldened by surging desire, he turned into her embrace and pressed himself against the length of her, enjoying how very _good_ it felt, especially after so long, before he began kissing her forehead, lingering as he made a path towards her mouth. The kiss she returned turned his inside molten, tongue forcing its way against his and he groaned, meeting it in full measure.

His hands roamed down her body, filling his palms as he explored the new shape of her. She mewled, a sound that made him flush even hotter, and arched her back, hips grinding against his. He was tearing at the waistband of her pants, skimming them down, pulling away only long enough to mirror the effort in front unsuccessfully. Instead, he slipped a hand under the cloth and grabbed the strong curve of muscle and held her tight against his engorged cock, beginning to thrust, breaths coming in quick gasps.

“Wait, stop,” she pleaded.

Her words shocked him even through the haze, and he jerked to a halt.

“No, no, Fenris.”

The fear in her voice chilled him back to his senses, and he fought through the unsatiated desire to raise his hand to her face in concern, voice breaking. “Hawke?”

“Anders--don’t!” Her eyes flew open with a gasp, and for a moment, he wasn’t sure she knew where she was. Awareness followed drumming heartbeats later, but the terror remained. “Fenris? What—“

He recoiled from her stiffly, pain stabbing him to the core, erection shriveling away. “You were dreaming of him.”

“Dreaming. Oh Maker, oh sweet Andraste,” she swore, confusion turning to loathing realization. “I was dreaming, and you were…” She reached for him.

he pulled out of her grasp. “Don’t--“ he warned her, anger bubbling up and filling him. “Don’t touch me!”

“Fenris, please,” she begged. And then she did something that truly frightened him and began crying.

But he moved himself as far away from her as he could get in the tent, rolling himself up into his cloak with his back to her, and listened to her cry herself out while he shivered from jealous fury and heartache as much as the cold.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They arrive at South Reach. Varric uncovers bad news. Aveline takes her turn confronting Fenris over his behavior towards Hawke. Hawke makes a bad decision.

They arrived at South Reach late in the morning, early enough that they had their choice of rooms for the evening in the low-end tavern. Varric was negotiating with the proprietor when Fenris touched him on the shoulder. “I am with you tonight.”

The expression on Varric’s face would have been comical if Fenris had been in any mood for it. “I thought I told you to make up with her,” he said with a glare.

“Leave it, Varric,” Hawke intervened. They exchanged a look, and Varric turned back to the proprietor to conclude arrangements.

After dropping their gear off in the rooms, they went their separate ways: Merrill and Orana off to the Alienage, Bodahn taking Sandal with him to find buyers for what goods he had, Varric, Aveline, and Donnic to head to other, more upscale gathering places to hear the news. With Hawke shutting herself up in her room, Fenris took to holding down a table in the mostly deserted public area, nursing a glass of the thick liquid the tapster called beer and reflecting on the mess that was his life: on the run--again--this time from templars, with a gravid woman he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving who dreamt every night of another man.

By late afternoon, the common room was beginning to fill with people. He got some looks, but Merrill had mentioned that proximity to the Brecilian Forest had made South Reach a place where the Dalish had occasionally come to trade for metal goods. One cool look was enough to keep the patrons away, until Varric came wandering back in. With a lift of his chin, he headed up the stairs, and Fenris rose to unsteadily follow.

Knocking on Hawke’s door, Varric waited until it opened before barging in. Fenris trailed more slowly, looking away quickly when Hawke met his eyes. All the anger and awkwardness of last night welled up between them, and to Fenris’s surprise, Varric didn’t seem to notice. He said, “I’ve got some bad news. There’s a squad of templars in town. Word is,” he went on with a hand upraised to stop them as Fenris began glowering and Hawke’s hands clenched into fists, “they’re in town looking for apostates. They’re staying at the Knight’s Rest, near the castle. Aveline and Donnic are keeping an eye on them and trying to learn more.”

“We should take them out,” Hawke said.

Varric looked at her with mild surprise. “They’re minding their own business, for now, and have no reason to believe we’re here. Even if they know about you or the events up in Kirkwall,” he reminded her. “We just keep our heads down, we should be able to get out of this just fine.”

Hawke scowled, which did her features no favor, as haggard as she was. “I don’t like it, Varric,”

It earned her a hard look. “What, some templars suddenly turn up dead in South Reach, and you don’t think that will look the slightest bit suspicious? That they won’t send down more people to investigate? I thought you smarter than that, Hawke.”

“I don’t like it, either,” Fenris chimed in.

“Yeah, but I don’t expect _you_ to like it, Elf. Just promise me you two won’t do anything stupid.”

He could feel the weight of Hawke’s stare on him. A glance, and the intensity of it hit him like a blow. She wanted him to say no. She _wanted_ to go after them. And that was so unlike Hawke, it unnerved him. “Will you be staying here now?” he asked Varric evasively.

“If it’ll keep you out of trouble, yes.”

“Watch her,” he said, avoiding meeting her eyes. “I promise not to get into trouble.”

“Fenris--” she began.

He cut her off with a chopping motion of his hand. “Varric is right. We fight if we have to, but we don’t go looking for it. I will be back later. Do not wait up for me.”

He stalked out into the growing twilight, looking for another rundown shack of a tavern to drink in. The rougher the better fit his mood. Some casual questions got him directions, the slurred speech from having spent the day drinking aiding in his cause. He was guided to a place called the Wicked Sister--he wondered what she’d done to be considered wicked--having to double back when he missed the narrow alley it was tucked into.

He came face to face with Aveline.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded after closing the distance, keeping her voice down but no less grim for it.

He eyed her. “About to drown my sorrows in as much wine as I can hold, if you must know.”

Before he could blink, she’d grabbed his shirt front and slammed him against the side of a building, mailed forearm coming up under his chin, a pricking sensation at his midsection. Startled, he opened himself up to tap into his tattoos, but he’d just started glowing when she growled, “You even think about doing that thing you do, and we’ll see how well it resists a dagger Sandal enchanted.” Gritting his teeth, he released the power, letting the lyrium runes fade, and forced himself to relax against her grip. She, however, did not. “Again: what do you think you’re doing, getting a separate room from Hawke?”

He gave her a long look. “I do not see how it is any of your business.”

“It damn well _is_ my business,” she snapped, “when you’re breaking Hawke’s heart.”

The harshness of her words caused him to swallow hard against the pressure at his throat, and his lips curled into a snarl. She seemed unmoved by his lack of continuance, exerting a tiny bit of pressure to bring his chin up higher until he relented. “You would not understand.”

“Try me.”

“Do you know what she dreams of?”

“The same thing we all dream of,” she replied. “Kirkwall, the day the world exploded.”

“No,” he spat. “She dreams of the _abomination_. She dreams of Anders.” He saw she didn’t understand, and went on. “Frequently. Even…” He’d said too much, and snapped his mouth shut.

Her nostrils flared, comprehension writ in her expression, and she released her hold, withdrawing the dagger. “I’m sorry for that, but they’re just dreams. He’s dead.”

He scowled. “Save your pity, Aveline. It is more than just that.”

“It’s the child, isn’t it,” she stated, rather than asked. “Do you love her, or not?” When he didn’t reply, she went on, a hint of steel creeping into her voice. “You said you did. Said you couldn’t live without her, we all saw that. Took my damn breath away, to see you find the courage to tell her something so obvious,” she admitted. “And she’s just as much in love with you.”

“That is not in question.” He felt a rising sense of panic-laced anger and curled his hands into fists to prevent himself from fleeing.

She bore on, unrelenting. “But family is just as important to her. You have to have known that, all the way back to when you first met her. She’s made us, all of us,” she added with an encompassing gesture of her hand, “her family by proxy, especially after losing Leandra and her brother and sister. But now she’s looking at the prospect of having a child, a child with the man she loves,” she stabbed him in the chest with a forefinger, “and that means the world to her, I can see it.” A sneer crept into her voice, “And that man is now running away from her.”

“I am not running away,” he denied hotly, temper getting the better of him. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Are you?” she shot back.

It stung. “I’m not leaving.”

She glared at him. “If Donnic moved out of my bed, he might as well be.”

“I am not Donnic,” he retorted, tone flat. “Are we done?”

“No. One more thing.” She poked him again. “Family is everything to her, and yet she loved you enough to stand by and let you kill your sister because that’s what you wanted. Even though you didn’t deserve it at the time. If you love her, you’d do the same.”

He grabbed at her finger and flung her hand aside. “I was not lusting after someone else. This conversation is over.”

She huffed as he stalked away and disappeared into the comfortable depths of the tavern.

#####

Fenris felt like the floor of the Hanged Man at dawn when he woke up the next morning. He hadn’t felt like this since…before he killed Danarius, he thought. By the strength of the light coming in through the shutters, the sun was well past risen. Groaning as he peeled himself out of his face first collapse against the strawtick mattress, scratching at a spot he was sure had fleas now, he staggered to paw through his gear for the waterskin, wetting his desert dry mouth with a swallow. A palmful to scrub on his face, and he felt—almost—ready to face the day.

He paused in his stumbling down the hall to look at Hawke’s door, but shook his head and passed it by. Down the stairs and into the common room, he was heading to the bar to order food when Varric, Aveline, and Donnic walked in, the two guards in phalanx formation behind Varric at the point. Something about that set his hackles up, and he stopped his progress to turn to them. “What is it?”

“Oh, good, you don’t have your sword,” Varric said coming up to him.

There was a tension about the dwarf that belied his cavalier tone, and Aveline and Donnic continued on to flank him. Fenris reacted to it by curling his hands into fists. “Why should that matter?”

“Because you’re not going to like the news I have.” His usual sarcasm was missing. “It’s Hawke. She’s not in her room, and news is going around that the templars have a prisoner.”

Hands grabbed him at wrist and forearms as he lunged, straining against his captivity. “Let go of me, or I swear I will rip your hearts out where you stand.”

“You can do that anyway,” said Aveline without a trace of humor. “We can’t go charging off after her.”

Fenris snarled. “Why not?”

“Because there’s an entire town of mostly devout Fereldans here, and a Bann and his guard who will wrap us up and tie us in a bow for the Knight-Commander if we make trouble in this town,” Varric explained in a brusque voice. Sympathy colored his scowl. “I feel the same way, but we have to be smart about this.”

Donnic’s grip on his right arm stayed strong when Fenris tested it, so he subsided, no longer fighting them but poised to break free the moment they eased up on their restraint. “How?” he snapped.

“Not here,” said Varric. “Let’s go pack up, and I’ll explain.” Fenris continued to glare at him, but he’d recovered enough from the initial burst of rage and concern for Hawke to know Varric wouldn’t rest until Hawke was safe, either. He relaxed and felt the hands holding him go slack to release him. With a curt nod of approval, Varric looked from him to Donnic. “Can you go let Bodahn and Merrill know we’re moving out?”

“On it,” Donnic said, exiting the tavern.

The three of them went back up the stairs, Fenris stalking up them with anger simmering just below the boiling point. He waited until he was in the room then whirled on Varric. “Speak, quickly.”

Varric began pulling his pack together as he spoke. “They haven’t come looking for us, so we should be okay for now. From what I could gather from the stable boy, they’re planning on leaving later today. We go about our business and leave town, just like a merchant would—out the western road—and set up an ambush. There are only six of them—we should be able to take them.”

“And what of Hawke?” Fenris said harshly. Worry set up skittery flutters in his belly, and he started running through an alternate plan to rescue her immediately.

“We do Hawke no good if we get caught, too,” Varric said in a hard voice. “So don’t even think about swooping in to save the day. They aren’t going to want her dead, at least not here in this misbegotten backwater.”

“You’re not helping, Dwarf,” Fenris growled through gritted teeth.

“Yes, I am. You, however,” he said with a stab of his fingers at Fenris’s chest, “are not. Get your things.” He slung his backpack and then Bianca over his back. “We’re leaving.”

Fenris swiftly grabbed his pack, berating himself for his activities the previous night and wishing he had time to get food. Nervous energy raced through his veins, making him want to do something, anything, towards getting Hawke back. The only reason he wasn’t charging off to do so was that after six years, he trusted Varric and Aveline.

But he wanted to. Badly.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The remaining companions depart South Reach early to set an ambush for the templars holding Hawke. They discover something unpleasant in the process.

They found Bodahn and Sandal at the livery, the former directing a boy into harnessing the oxen while Sandal cheerfully loaded what goods they’d exchanged into the wagon. Varric went over to confer with Bodahn while Fenris shifted on the balls of his feet, unable to remain still. Aveline watched him for a time, glancing over periodically, before saying, “I’m sorry about last night.”

He huffed. “This is not the time for it.”

“You have something better to do while we wait?” she countered. When he fell into a silent glower, she said, “I don’t regret what I said, but maybe how I delivered it.”

“Since I take issue with what you said,” he replied, keeping a watchful eye on the streets outside the building, “apology not accepted.”

“Fine,” she sighed with exasperation. “As long as it doesn’t affect us from saving her.”

“It will not.”

They fell quiet at that, until Donnic arrived with Merrill and Orana in tow. Orana looked panic-stricken, and Merrill had an arm around her shoulders, half-guiding, half-soothing her. Aveline and Donnic exchanged worried touches. Joining them, Varric said, “We need someone to stay behind and keep an eye on the templars in case they change their plans. It’ll also be good to have someone coming in behind them when they do leave, to prevent anyone from escaping.”

“I will do it,” Fenris offered immediately.

“You’re just a little too conspicuous,” Varric pointed out. “It’s going to need to be either me, Aveline, or Donnic.”

Aveline said, “I’ll do it then.”

“Are you sure, love?” Donnic asked, giving her a dubious look. “I would have thought you’d want to be in the thick of the fight.”

“I do,” she replied in a grim tone. “But if something goes wrong here, I want to be the one ready to do something about it. I can try to catch up with you after they leave, before the fighting starts.” She met Fenris’s eyes and nodded. He dipped his chin in understanding, grateful that it would be her if not him.

“Good,” Varric said. “You can travel more quickly than I could. Donnic, you’re with us.”

She left the yard for the street, disappearing around a corner.

Fenris startled briefly when Merrill kissed Orana before peeling away, leaving her with Bodhan and Sandal. She joined them with, “Let’s go. There might be something I can do with time to prepare.”

They moved out, the four of them fanning around Bodahn’s wagon as it rumbled through the town and out the western gate without mishap. It was all Fenris could do not to unsheathe his sword and rush back in with the sense of foreboding crawling up and down his spine. They were some distance from the town’s walls, around several curves in the road, when Varric called a halt. There was a clearing off to the side circled by a copse of trees, and he directed Bodahn to pull his wagon off the road into it, effectively vanishing from view.

“We’re going to have to hit them fast and hard,” Fenris noted.

“Tell us something we don’t know, Elf,” said Varric. Fenris bared his teeth at him. Varric sighed. “Sorry, we’re all worried about her, but you especially.”

Without acknowledging it, Fenris continued. “Donnic, you and I will be on this side of the road.” He swept a hand to indicate the area on the far side of the wagon. “Varric, mage,” he said the word through a clenched jaw, hating himself a little for the necessity of making use of her, “you will take cover in the trees. Protect the wagon. Hopefully with the two of us distracting them from the open, they will be too engaged to go after you, and you can hit them from behind.”

“My favorite,” Varric cracked.

Fenris looked steadily at Donnic. “Try to free Hawke, if you can. She can help.”

His eyes widened with mild surprise. “What about your back?” Donnic asked.

“Saving her is more important.”

Varric snorted. “She’d disagree with that, you know.”

“Yes, and when she is safe and can argue it...” he trailed off, swallowing, his expression going hard.

“Good enough,” Varric agreed hastily. “C’mon, Daisy, off to the bushes with you.”

The cover on the opposite side of the road was sparse at best, a clump of brush that barely sufficed to hide Fenris and Donnic, and only if they crouched. It made for a difficult wait as the sun climbed the sky, having to shift to prevent legs from falling asleep or muscles from cramping. The spoke little, and when they did, it was in murmurs to suggest tactics, augmented in large part by hand gestures.

There were a couple of false alarms—other traders leaving South Reach to parts west—and Fenris began to grow restless with the uncertainty. Maybe they’d gone east, towards Denerim. Maybe they had decided to stay another day. Maybe something had happened to Aveline, and they were waiting in vain.

The sun had just passed its zenith and Fenris’s patience had reached an end when Aveline trotted around the bend, her armor clanking. Donnic gave a distinctive whistle, and her head swiveled, her steps angling her to the brush. She took a waterskin offered by Donnic to rinse out her mouth, catching her breath. “They left by the western gate not long after you did. They have a wagon they’re carrying Hawke in. They shouldn’t be far behind me.”

“Are you good--“ Fenris started

Aveline interrupted him, “I’m good to go.”

He nodded curtly and sank back to a crouch to wait.

The sound of wagon wheels crunched up the road, the driver wearing the red sword tabard of the templar order, one other seated next to him, one in the back and five others walking around the sides and rear, like guards--two more than the six Varric had promised. He re-settled his grip on his sword, looking over to Donnic and Aveline and getting a nod of readiness in return, then launched himself from cover.

Fenris concentrated to discharge a blast of power towards the templars, hoping to disorient them as they charged. The one in the back staggered, a hand clutching the side of the wagon, then disappeared from view entirely as he seemed to fall. By that time, Fenris had reached the closest templar on the road and shifted his focus to mowing through him as quickly as possible. Energy flared, tinging the world with a bluish cast, but as he drew back to lash out with his sword, weakness came over him in a dizzying wave, sapping him of his strength. Panicked, he released control of his tattoos, his vision settling back to normal, and the lassitude passed, although not in time to more than deflect that blade that whistled towards his arm, leaving a long gash across his bicep. Anger stirred in him, and he let out a snarl, reversing the direction of his swing to feint towards his attacker’s head and, when the woman brought her shield up in defense, he dropped the tip to cut her leg out from under her, leaving her on the ground screaming.

Another woman’s scream went up over the battlefield--Merrill’s voice--but he had no time to find her as two more templars rushed towards him. A corner of his mind heard Donnic engaged with a fourth templar, and he stayed near that, using the guardsman as cover to protect his back while he focused on two templars working in tandem. Parry, dodge, cut, the templars worked as a pair, and when one took a step back and paused, just out of reach, Fenris realized that they had been the source of the disruption. They were doing it in a rhythm, and he bided his time, taking their blows on his sword until the moment he knew the shift would come. He lunged forward when next it did, not towards the one taking the brunt of the attack, but past him, taking the slash across the back in exchange for sliding the tip of his sword up under the man’s breastplate. A spout of blood geysered out of the templar’s mouth, running down the red sword, until he fell.

He had little time to admire his handiwork, though. A detached portion of his mind knew the wound on his back was grievous, and it was only a matter of time before the pain crippled him. Spinning away, he slammed out his sword, beating at the remaining templar with all the raw fury that had been boiling away inside him since news of Hawke’s capture had been known--no, since before that, the feeling of helplessness and jealousy and rage at the way his life had turned since falling in love with her, the injustice of it all. The longsword went spinning out of the man’s hand at a particularly vicious cut, and sheer terror reflected in his eyes before the Blade of Mercy crashed into the juncture of neck and shoulder, blood gushing from the wound in a fountain before he collapsed in a heap.

An eerie silence descended at the sudden cessation of battle, until the faint susurrus of metal running across cloth sounded next to him: Donnic cleaning his sword off on the brightly colored sash of his foe, and a regular thwack-thwack-thwacking sound from within the bed of the wagon. Footsteps sounded, and he whirled towards the noise, until he identified Aveline approaching the back of the wagon from the other side.

“Hawke,” Fenris said, hurrying to the wagon with his sword still drawn. The templar that had been there was nowhere to be seen. That was, until he looked over the side. Gore spattered half the wagon and most of Hawke’s clothing, the guard’s head smashed into so much pulp it was no longer recognizable as such. Despite being hooded and having her hands tied, Hawke was kicking at the corpse’s chest with a heel, the ribs staved in and blood soaked up to her knee, the source of the sound. Aveline looked on, white-faced.

“Maker’s breath,” Donnic intoned as he reached the side and took in the carnage.

It cut through the spell of horror that had fallen over Fenris at the sight. “Hawke,” he said. “Hawke, we’re here. We will get you out of that, stop struggling.” Passing his sword to Donnic, he grabbed the side of the wagon and climbed into it, wincing as the pain of his wounds began to make themselves known. She continued to pulverize the body and jerked away when he touched her forearm. “Hawke, it is Fenris. Be still.” She stopped but continued shaking as he pulled his knife from his belt and cut the knot tying the bag over her head, ripping it free, before turning it to sawing at the leather straps binding her wrists.

They parted with a snap, and she surged up to a seated position, hands turning into claws to swipe towards his face, her eyes preternaturally blue against the bloodshot whites and completely devoid of reason. “Marian!” he called out to her sharply, dropping the knife to snatch at her wrists. Guilt twisted his gut, but he dug his thumbs between the small bones until she cried out in pain.

“Merrill!” Aveline’s voice cracked in command. A bluish-silver glow coalesced around Hawke, and her eyes rolled back in her head.

She slumped forward into his arms, preventing him from launching himself at the mage. He whipped his head around and snarled, “What did you to her!”

“I just put her to sleep,” Merrill said defensively. “She’ll wake up in a few minutes.”

“Easy, Fenris,” Aveline said, although she was obviously shaken. “Maker, that was her?”

“Yes,” Fenris said, repositioning Hawke in his grip. “Help me get her down.” They lowered the back of the wagon and gathered Hawke’s limp form as Fenris dragged her back until he could drop to the ground and take her up himself. With an arm slung around his and Aveline’s shoulders, he moved towards Bodahn’s hiding place. “We need to get her out of these clothes.”

“And get out of here,” Aveline added. “We don’t want to be on the road if someone else comes down it.”

“Andraste’s glowing ass cheeks,” Varric swore when he saw Hawke. “Is there a bloodbath back there?”

“Just about,” said Donnic. Aveline cut him a glare.

All Fenris had to say was, “Varric,” and the dwarf nodded understanding and said, “I’ll take care of it. You take care of her.”

Bodahn’s eyes went wide when he spied them. Orana blanched and covered her mouth and nose with her steepled hands. Fenris ignored both of them to bring Hawke around to the back, out of their sight. His wounds were beginning to hamper him, the pain in his back flaring to a dull burn, and Aveline caught his grimace as he bent over to put Hawke down. “You idiot, we still have some potions left, go find one and take it or you’ll be no use to us. I can take care of her.”

Digging around in the packs stashed in the wagon, he first found a change of clothes for Hawke, draping them over the end, then rummaged further to find the carefully packed vials of potions. Uncorking one, he kept an eye on Aveline as she stripped Hawke out of the blood sodden garments, his lips peeling back in a silent snarl at the fresh bruising on her arms and legs, but what shocked him was getting a look at the changes wrought by her pregnancy, the swollen breasts, the rounded belly. Aveline glanced up at him. “Kind of makes it all real, doesn’t it,” she commented quietly.

He shook his head as if clearing it. “Yes.”

They finished in silence, Fenris rolling the ruined clothes up into a bundle and stashing them in the back of the wagon. Hauling the packs out, he plucked the daggers from Hawke’s and put them into his own before slinging it over his shoulder. Aveline nodded approval and took up hers and Donnic’s, leaving as Hawke began to stir.

Fenris winced as he fell to one knee beside her. One of her hands went up to shield her eyes from the sun, wincing at its brightness, the other over her belly in a gesture he recognized as protective. “What happened?” she asked, voice rusty.

“The templars are dead,” he said, then harshly, “What were you thinking?”

“I don’t know...”

He growled. “What do you mean, ‘you don’t know’?” His anger rose as all the pent-up worry for her threatened to choke him. “We were going to stay out of trouble. How did they catch you?”

“I don’t know!” she snapped. “I don’t remember!”

He rocked back to his heel, regretting the motion instantly from the stiffness seizing his spine. Wariness entered his voice. “You don’t remember?”

She struggled to a seated position, palms on the ground. “No.”

“Everything okay here?”

Shaking his head at Varric, Fenris lifted himself back to his feet and walked away.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bodahn and Sandal part ways, headed for Orlais, while the rest fall back to the Brecilian Forest as Hawke planned. Fenris is uncomfortable being looked to to lead with Hawke's listlessness. The companions discuss what to do about Hawke's increasingly strange behavior and come to a decision, before events force a crisis point.

After clearing the road and gathering their gear, Varric shook Bodahn’s hand. “This is where we part ways. Will you be okay?”

“Oh, don’t worry about us. Sandal and I traveled these roads plenty of times before the Blight. We should be safe enough getting to Orlais. And if anyone asks about you, we won’t tell anything, will we boy?”

“Enchantment?” Sandal asked hopefully.

Hawke roused from the fugue she had fallen into to put a hand on Bodahn and Sandal’s shoulders. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me over the years. I wish I could do more for you now.”

“Now, don’t you mind that, messere,” Bodahn assured her, but he shifted on his feet, betraying his apprehension. “I just wish the boy and I could be there to help when the baby arrives.”

Fenris grimaced at the reminder, looking away. “We should move on. The longer we linger here, the more likely someone may happen upon us.”

“Of course, of course,” Bodahn agreed, stumping up to thrust a hand at him. Fenris looked at it with surprise, but then shook it briefly. “Take care of her for us.”

“Buh-bye,” Sandal said with a wave, already seated on the wagon.

There was some confusion about whether Orana would be going with them. She shook her head vehemently, clinging to Merrill’s hand. “I won’t be any trouble, masters. I can keep up, and cook and keep the camp. I promise.”

With Fenris eyeing her balefully, Merrill straightened her spine. “She has just as much right to come along as any of the rest of us.”

He capitulated with a resigned sigh.

All of them waved as Bodahn swung himself up to the driver’s bench and chirruped the oxen into moving. The wagon rumbled back towards the road, continuing westwards.

“Now what?” Donnic asked.

Fenris settled the straps of his pack more comfortably on his shoulders, glancing at Hawke out of long habit. She had lapsed back into silence, leaving it to him to say, “The plan was to head to the Forest if we encountered trouble. I think we do that.”

“And then what?” was Varric’s question.

“Isn’t there a town or something on the other side?”

“Gwaren,” Aveline supplied. “The queen’s father used to hold the teyrndom. It’s a port city, cut off from the rest of the country by the Forest.” She frowned. “If the templars have reached Denerim, which they have, they may be there as well. Especially if they bought Isabela’s ruse that we fled by ship.”

A curse escaped Fenris. “We’ll have to take that chance. This isn’t working out the way Hawke planned.”

They doubled back, giving South Reach a wide berth, and were forced to camp short of the Forest when night fell before they could reach it. Aveline glared at Fenris when he stubbornly insisted on joining Varric in his tent, even Merrill rolling her eyes and declaring, “Fine!” It was a tight fit, but she and Orana squeezed in with Hawke.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Elf,” Varric said as he settled down in his blankets.

“She doesn’t know, doesn’t _remember_ , how she got captured by the templars,” Fenris said, staring blindly into the darkness above his head. “You did not see the look on her face when we freed her. She was like an animal.”

“All the more reason you should be with her,” Varric pointed out, shifting to put his back to Fenris. “She’s going through a tough time. She needs you.”

Fenris didn’t reply, and Varric didn’t press. His snores began not long after, but Fenris stayed awake, unable to sleep.

#####

The Brecilian Forest was full of green. Trees, bushes, the occasional clearing of grass, even the light was green in most places. It unnerved Fenris, being surrounded by this much vegetation.

Of course, Merrill loved it.

“I have missed this place,” she said happily, stroking a long, broad leaf from some type of tree Fenris couldn’t identify.

Hawke continued to travel in dull silence, and everyone persisted in deferring to him, something he wasn’t quite sure he liked. He asked roughly, “Do you know of a good place to camp?”

“Oh, yes, several, but I don’t know if they’d do you any good, because they’re rather far from here.”

He resisted the urge to bury his face in the palm of his hand, settling on a lip-curling sneer. “Can you find a good spot by nightfall?”

“Oh! Probably.” She cocked her head to one side. “There’s a stream nearby. We can follow it, there will probably be a good place down just a bit.”

The green light began taking on an orange honey tinge, the sun setting off in the distance somewhere. He couldn’t tell east from west or north from south in this forsaken place, and only Merrill’s confident stride kept him clutching at the strap of his sword belt rather than hacking the foliage apart like a Lowtown gang.

Hawke turned in as soon as they’d finished eating. Leaving Orana to watch over her, Fenris drew the rest of them out of earshot. “We have to do something,” he said without preamble. “She can’t continue like this. _We_ cannot continue like this.”

Aveline tried to calm him. “We’re all worried about her. But what _can_ we do?”

“I don’t know. Something. Something we haven’t thought to try yet.”

“I've heard a few stories about dreams and the mind,” Varric mused. “But only whispers, and all of them involve mages.”

“No mages,” Fenris snapped

Donnic snorted. “You said something we haven’t thought to try yet. I know you dislike them, but if they can actually do something, why are you so quick to rule them out?”

“Excuse me,” Merrill started.

Aveline overrode it. “Although it would be difficult for us to get their assistance,” she said thoughtfully to Donnic, frowning, “I don’t know what, exactly, the response would be to the Champion of Kirkwall walking up to a Tower at this point, given the templar siege, but I’m sure they’d be wondering if the Maker was returning the next day.”

Fenris ground his teeth. “We can’t go to the Tower,” he said flatly.

“If you don’t like the idea, Elf, do you have any other suggestions?” Varric asked irritably.

“No,” Fenris said, rounding on him, “but Aveline is right, if we took Hawke to the Circle, she probably wouldn't get out alive.”

“What about an apostate?” Donnic suggested. “They seemed to be thick enough on the ground in Kirkwall.”

“It’s harder than Hawke made it look,” Aveline replied, giving Merrill a critical glance. “We could search for weeks and not get a sniff of one. That’s how they stay out of the hands of the templars.”

“And even if we did,” Varric added, “would you trust them inside Hawke’s mind?”

Fenris felt every hair lift away from his body, the tell-tale scent of ozone stinging his nose. He went for his sword, runes blazing to life as he swung towards the source of the disturbance.

Merrill stood holding her staff before her, butt-end planted on the ground and a corona of electricity crackling about it. Her green eyes blazed with anger, and the absurd thought that crossed his mind in that instance was that somewhere along the way she’d finally grown a backbone. He wasn’t the only one staring at her—the other three were as well, Varric gaping. “Excuse me,” she repeated more firmly. “But I have a suggestion.”

“Helluva way to interject, Daisy,” Varric said with a nervous chuckle.

“Well, you wouldn’t listen to me, otherwise,” she replied tartly. The nimbus of lightning vanished, and Fenris let out his breath, runes fading into quiescence. More reluctantly, he sheathed his sword as she continued. She looked jumpy now. “I think we should take her to a Keeper.”

“The Dalish,” Aveline said, incredulous. “Why?”

“You of all people should remember,” Merrill said, turning to face the woman. “Mar—“ Her voice caught on the name, and her eyes turned brighter from unshed tears. “When we helped Feynriel. I never learned much about the Dreamers, but the Keepers have knowledge of the Fade, and if she knew so much, another one might as well. And dreams are part of the Fade. That’s why the mages might be useful,” she said towards Varric. “But the Keepers are mages, too.”

“They are,” Varric agreed reluctantly. “But why would they want to help us?”

“They might not,” Merrill said. “But we can at least ask. And there is one Keeper, Zathrian, who was much older than anyone remembers our kind living for. If he survived the Blight, then he’d probably know as much as--” She cut herself off again.

The whole idea of putting Hawke into the hands of a mage made Fenris’s skin crawl. He scoffed, “We don’t even know where to find them.”

“Yes, we do,” Merrill replied promptly and with such confidence, he scowled. “They live in this forest. There are a few places where the clans camp, we just need to travel to them until we find them.”

“Like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Varric grumbled.

Fenris’s scowl deepened. “I think I hate the idea of apostates more than mages of the Circle,” he said, gaze directed at Merrill. “But I hate the idea of Hawke being captured by the templars or continuing to suffer even more. Very well, we’ll try to find the Dalish.”

“Even if we do find them, they’re not going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts,” Aveline pointed out. “What makes you think they’ll help?”

Fenris gave her a feral smile. “I have something in mind.”

No matter the weight of their expectations, he refused to share. Eventually, they all turned in, Fenris taking first watch.

The next morning, he was feeding kindling into the fire when Merrill’s voice came panicked from the tent. “Hawke? Hawke?” Something in the quality of it had him reaching for his sword, the others scrambling out of their tents to stand before the women’s. Merrill crawled out, ashen under the vallaslin. “She won’t wake up.”

“What did you do to her?” Fenris snarled, closing the distance to Merrill. The others burst into motion, descending on them.

“Nothing!” Merrill cried out, scurrying to her feet and putting her hands out protectively.

Aveline cut between them, stiff-arming Fenris on either shoulder to shove him back. “Let her speak.”

He stepped aside to make eye contact with Merrill and commanded with a jerk of his chin, “Speak, then. What happened?”

“Nothing!” Merrill repeated. “She was asleep when I went into my tent, and she dreamt, just like you said she did. She woke me up quite a bit, just like you. I swear, I didn’t do anything, no magic this time, but she won’t wake up.” Fenris dodged around Aveline, lowering himself to crawl in as Merrill went on. “I shook her very hard, and she just wouldn’t.”

The inside of the tent was dim, the sun faintly glowing through the tarp. Hawke was curled up on her side, one hand seeming to pull her head down so the chin tucked into her chest, the other curved over her swollen belly. He was struck with a chill of fear. The position looked defensive.

“Hawke,” he said softly, putting a hand to her shoulder. As Merrill had said, she didn’t stir, so he shook her. “Hawke,” he said again, watching for a reaction. Nothing. He put a hand to her cheek, feeling how hot it was, but she didn’t stir. With a grimace, he slapped her, then again, hard enough to leave a mark. Still, nothing.

He swore and backed out of the tent, pacing with agitation on the balls of his feet. “She won’t wake.” Grinding his teeth, he looked at Merrill, “Is there nothing you can do?”

She shook her head, eyes wide with fright. “My magic doesn’t work like that. Only a full Keeper knows the most powerful magics.” She gulped. “Fenris...this reminds me of Feynriel.”

The name sounded vaguely familiar. He recalled she’d said it to him recently, but couldn’t place it otherwise. “Who?”

“Feynriel, you must remember him. The boy born in the Alienage with the human father that Hawke saved from the slavers and took to the Dalish.” He grimaced as the description began pinging his memory. “Mar--“ she started, then compressed her lips together into a thin line, eyes brightening with unshed tears. “He fell into a slumber and could not be woken, and we had to go into the Fade to save him. Oh,” she started, blinking once. “That’s right, Hawke didn’t tell you about it because she knew you’d be angry at her for helping the mages.”

He made a face and ignored the omission. “Then we will have to find a Keeper, and soon. Quickly.”

“There is something I can do,” Merrill said, drawing her knife and exposing her forearm.” I can--“

Fenris growled. “No!”

“There are no demons involved, and it will speed--“

“I said _no_!”

“But--“

Drawing his sword, he glared at her with murderous intent. “If you use blood magic, so help me, I will cut you down where you stand.”

“But Hawke might die!”

“Don’t you think I know that!”

The silence that followed his anguished shout was deafening, broken by Varric clearing his throat. “The longer we stand here arguing, the longer it’s going to take us to find them. We should get a move on.”

“I can help a little,” Aveline jumped in, as Fenris began to back down in slow increments. “I--my father, I took care of him through the illness that took his life. If we can get her to drink some broth while she’s...like this, we may be able to buy a little time. If not...” She trailed off awkwardly.

Donnic walked up and clapped his hand on Fenris’s shoulder, making him jump. “Come on,” he said gruffly. “Let’s save Hawke for a change.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The companions travel the Brecilian Forest with an unconscious Hawke in tow, looking for the Dalish. When they encounter them, desperation overcomes Fenris's aversion to magic to seek help for Hawke from the Keeper. Some quiet time allows Fenris to contemplate his feelings for Hawke and to make some decisions.

Leaving turned out to be more difficult than declaring it; with Bodahn gone, they were without transportation. Merrill and Donnic seemed to have some idea how to work around it, so put their heads together to improvise a sledge to carry Hawke that could be pulled through the narrow trails Merrill found. Hawke had to be tied to it so as not to slide right off the end, and Fenris grimaced at the bruises she would probably have from the ropes.

“We need to follow the water,” Merrill informed them as they pulled their packs onto their shoulders. “It’s the best chance at finding them. There will be a clan somewhere off this stream--or, was, seven years ago. Hopefully they’ve moved back here since the Blight,” she said worriedly, biting her lower lip.

Fenris took the first shift dragging Hawke, dismissing the image of being some kind of pack animal and reminding himself that this was Hawke and the only way to save her. Stubbornly, he went past the point of exhaustion, guilt goading him on, until Aveline called a rest and said, “I’ll take it next.”

By the end of the first day, they’d all taken a turn, even Orana, collapsing into camp thoroughly wearied by the unfamiliar exertion. If they hadn’t needed to make something to try to get down Hawke, they wouldn’t have bothered with a fire. Aveline discussed the ingredients with Orana, murmuring quietly, while Fenris sat next to Hawke, his arms resting on his upbent knees.

“I know that look, Elf,” Varric said, coming to join him and sitting down on Hawke’s other side with a grunting sigh. “There’s nothing you could’ve done about it.”

“How do you know? Maybe if I had been there, whatever happened to her wouldn’t have. Maybe the mage’s presence had something to do with it.” He found Merrill putting up a tent across the firepit and glowered.

“Don’t you start blaming her,” Varric said, warning in his tone. “She and Hawke have had their differences over the years, but she loves Hawke just as much as I do. She would never knowingly hurt Hawke.”

“Unlike me?” Fenris asked, bitterness creeping into his tone.

“You said it, not me. And I don’t believe it for a second. You were just going through a rough patch. People do that. I have full confidence you’ll fix things up soon enough.”

Fenris glanced down to Hawke. “If she wakes.”

A meaty hand punched his shoulder, rocking him sideways. “Don’t talk like that. Ever. I’ll punch you again if you do. Because she would totally kick your ass if she was awake and heard you talking like that, so I’m doing it for her.”

He sniffed, a flicker of amusement dying. “I wouldn’t mind her kicking my ass right now.”

Varric sighed again then shoved him. “Get up. Go do something useful, like gather firewood or something. You’re depressing me, and that means you’re probably depressing her.”

#####

They continued on as Merrill suggested, following the stream as closely as possible and leaving it only when the terrain demanded. Anxiety rose and tempers frayed as the days crept by and the Dalish weren’t found. Hawke took down the broth Aveline had instructed Orana to make, but it wasn’t enough. Her cheeks hollowed out and her skin turned translucent. On the fourth night, Merrill shook her head, near tears. “I’m no healer, but I think things could get very bad if we don’t find them soon.”

It was two more days before they found the Dalish--or the Dalish found them. An elven man, dark haired and pale eyed, materialized on the path Merrill led them on, a bow trained on Aveline just behind her. “Hold there. Why do you travel with shemlen in this forest?”

“Aneth ara,” Merrill said in return. “We come seeking your Keeper. My friend, there is something wrong with her, and there may be magic involved.”

He eyed them warily, eyebrows lifting when his gaze came upon Fenris. Unconsciously, Fenris bared his teeth in return, and the hunter’s perusal moved on and back to Merrill. “Where is your clan?”

“I...” Merrill started, then stopped, bringing both hands to grip her staff tightly before her. “I left my clan in the place the humans call the Free Marches, north of here. These people are my clan now.”

“Please,” Fenris said, lowering the sledge to the ground as quickly but gently as he could, and moved around Aveline to stand next to Merrill. The archer’s aim shifted from Aveline to him. “We do not have much time. Let us speak to the Keeper. I think she will listen to what I have to offer.”

The hunter eyed them suspiciously, but lowered his bow a fraction and whistled. Another dozen Dalish emerged from the trees surrounding them, all with bows in their hands and arrows nocked. “We will take you to her. No tricks, or we will cut you down.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Fenris said, curling his lip in a sneer.

Aveline put a hand on his arm. “Shut up, you idiot. Don’t undo everything with your posturing.”

Fenris clamped down on his temper and nodded curtly. “My apologies,” he directed at the hunter.

“He’s just worried about her,” Merrill added, and the hunter nodded acceptance and signaled them to move out.

The path was no more difficult, but Fenris had a hard time curbing his impatience so close to their goal. They reached the camp in the late afternoon and suffered the stares of the Dalish, young and old, as two humans, a dwarf, and two Tevinter elves came in accompanied by a strange Dalish woman and the hunters. The apparent leader, the one who had spoken to them, gave them a hard look and said, “Stay here,” and with a gesture to the others, he left the hunters to guard them with readied bows while he met with a woman parting the crowds to approach them.

She was young, Fenris noted, blonde hair pulled back much like Marethari’s, face an intricate frieze of vallaslin, more than any other in the camp. With a shock, he recognized the cool authority she exuded as that of the Keeper, confirmed when she approached the group, focusing on Merrill. “Aneth ara. My hunter says you bring a problem to us.”

“Aneth ara, Keeper,” Merrill returned with nervous reverence then paused. “Lanaya?”

Lanaya studied her then smiled gravely. “Merrill, isn’t it? I remember you from the Arlathvhen” Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you not with your clan?”

“I am...” she glanced over her shoulder, looking over them in a mild panic, but then spied Hawke and seemed to calm herself. Turning back, she said, “I am outcast from my clan. I left them, to live with the humans in the city of Kirkwall. They are my friends and family.”

“I see,” Lanaya said, revealing nothing. “Then why do you seek the help of the Dalish?”

The word seemed to come as a blow to Merrill, bowing against it. Fenris stepped up, lifting his chin defiantly to the woman he knew to be a mage. “This woman,” he said, pointing to Hawke, “was a friend of the Keeper Marethari. She trusted her,” he said over the sudden murmurs of disbelief from the onlookers around them. “Merrill says you might know how to help her. So, we ask.”

Lanaya’s cool gaze shifted to him, and he met it unblinkingly. Whatever she saw in her assessment, she nodded to it. “You are not of the Dalish, or a mage. What do you know of it?”

He set his jaw to keep from baring his teeth. Merrill saved him by jumping in. “Six days ago, she fell asleep and hasn’t awakened. Before that, she complained of dreams, dreams all the time, nightmares, unusual to her. We thought to find Zathrian, thinking he of all Keepers would know the ancient lore that might help us figure out what plagues her.”

“Zathrian is dead,” Lanaya noted.

Merrill nodded. “I...had thought as much, when I recognized you. Some years ago, Marethari,” she said with only the barest of stutters, “found a somniari in Kirkwall, who was attacked by demons and fell into a stupor such as this. She had pieced together an old ritual that would allow those he trusted to enter the Fade, even if they were not mages themselves. With Zathrian gone, I’m hoping he might have taught it to you.”

“Perhaps,” Lanaya said.

“Then you’ll help us?” Merrill asked hopefully.

“This woman is an outsider. _You_ are outcast,” Lanaya pointed out. “Why should we help?”

“Because she will die if you don’t,” Fenris interrupted with a growl.

She turned her attention back to him. “People die. That is the way of life.”

“Would you do so in exchange for this?” Fenris drew out a leather wrapped object from his pack. He turned back the edges to reveal the arulin’holm nestled in the protective folds. Beside him, Merrill sucked in a breath. “Keeper Marethari entrusted this to Hawke, above Merrill, once her First. Merrill said that anyone within the clan could borrow the tool if a great favor was done. She has protected it all these years. I will return it now, if you know and will perform the ritual.”

“That is a great artifact of our people,” Lanaya said in a quiet voice, eyeing it and then Fenris warily. “A human should not have it.”

“And yet Marethari gave it to her,” Fenris said flatly, withdrawing the knife to wrap it up once more.

“I would like to examine her...Hawke you called her?” Fenris nodded. “Hawke before making a decision.”

“Please do so quickly,” he said.

“You care for her,” Lanaya said with a quick smile. “That’s good.”

They untied Hawke from the sledge, Aveline and Donnic hoisting her to a mat near Lanaya’s aravel. Fenris trailed them and hovered while Lanaya made her assessment, putting fingers to wrist and throat, peeling back Hawke’s eyelids to look at her eyes, palms on her forehead and belly, reading some kind of esoteric secret in the touch. A faint glow coalesced in her hands, and Aveline clamped onto his elbow when he tensed as the magic touched Hawke. Merrill stood on his other side, arms wrapped over her chest and watching with avid interest. As much as he distrusted her tendency to reach for blood magic, he felt reassured by her oversight.

Lanaya rolled back to sit on her heels, sighing. “Her spirit is lost in the Fade, as you suspected. I have used my magic to stabilize her while I consider your offer.”

Fenris asked, “Is there nothing more you can do?”

“Not at this time,” she replied, pushing to her feet in one smooth motion. “You may stay with her if you’d like. The rest of you,” she scanned over the rest of their group, pausing on Merrill, who cringed, “may make camp on the edge of ours while I deliberate.”

None of them look pleased to be dismissed, Aveline frowning and Varric’s finger curled and twitching as if it was around Bianca’s trigger. Donnic touched Aveline’s arm, earning him a sharp look. She gave him a wordless nod and walked away, followed by Orana and a nervous Merrill. Varric paused, despite the hunters watching him warily, opened his mouth, closed it, then shook his head before turning to go.

Fenris gave each of the hunters a cool look until they backed off, out of earshot but not out of line of sight, keeping an eye on him sidelong. Taking it as the closest thing to privacy he could expect, he unsheathed his sword and sank to sit next to the mat, laying the sword aside on the ground within easy reach. His eyes moved as he looked over Hawke, noting again the translucency of her skin, the gauntness of her cheeks. Memory bubbled up, and he reached out hesitantly, stopping just short of touching while he wavered, before closing the gap and laying his palm on the swelling of her belly over the wool blanket. It had been only a couple of weeks, but it seemed larger now, or maybe it was because he touched her alone, without her hand to guide him, or the guilt gnawing at him.

It surprised him, that realization. For so much of his life, guilt had been an emotion he hadn’t felt, or hadn’t allowed himself to feel. Sebastian had mistakenly believed he would feel guilt for what he had done as Danarius’s slave, but he hadn’t. He had been an instrument, a tool, and he’d turned off those emotions to survive them. He’d killed. They’d all killed, if you got down to it. The only emotions that had room in a life like that were anger and hate.

Hawke had changed all that. Somewhere along the way, he’d started feeling things he’d only felt shadows of in his time among the Fog Warriors. Acceptance. Belonging. Humor. Friendship. Desire. He wasn’t sure when that had happened, it had crept up on him on cat feet, but he could still remember the first morning he woke with the dream memory of her touch on his skin and the ache in his loins. The scent of her after three days out on the Coast. Her hair brushing against his neck when she leaned over his shoulder, teaching him to read. Her warmth, just from proximity.

If it had been only desire, it might have been easy. It had seemed so to Isabela, given the tales of her conquests at the Rose. To Sebastian, from what he’d implied, back before he’d taken his vows. He’d used her, he could look back and admit it now, to free himself from the hunters, and she’d returned it with...respect. She had been the first person, human, elf, or dwarf, to treat him as anything but a slave. Like a person. Like an equal. Letting him live where he chose, do what he chose...allowing him his freedom. The only time she hadn’t had been the night he’d gone to her house and she’d kissed him. He’d wanted her, and he let her have him, giving of himself as much as taking, but when it was over and he tried to leave, she stopped him. She’d asked him to stay, and he’d refused her, fleeing.

That was the first time he’d felt guilt, the raw, toxic feeling gnawing away at his insides. Even after her mother had died, he’d stayed away from her, just as he’d stayed away from her now--not physically, but emotionally. Aveline had been right. She wanted him, _needed_ him, and he hadn’t been there for her, even though she’d been there for him anytime he’d needed her, without question or hesitation.

He spread his fingers out as wide as they would go, splaying across the bulging curve. Not just her, but the child as well. _His_ child. He tried the words out in his mind for the first time, throat working as if tasting them. They were still terrifying and alien...but he’d faced terrifying and alien before with her and survived. And he had told her then that he couldn’t imagine living without her. This child was a part of her reality now, and if he wanted to be a part of it, he would have to accept it. She hadn’t chosen it any more than he had...but it was a consequence of having her. Wanting her. Lightly, he moved his hand, feeling the contours. He still wanted her, wanted to feel her moving against him, inside her, to feel her mouth on his...he felt himself stir, and stopped the motion, focusing on regaining control. They’d made this child, the two of them...and maybe that was not such a bad thing.

“I promise you,” he said softly, taking her slack hand and bringing it up to his cheek, looking up at her face, so frightfully still and waxen, “if there is anything we can do to save you, any price that must be paid, I’ll pay it. Even if it means losing you forever, if I must, just to know that you and our child are safe. But if there is the chance, if you’ll have me, I will embrace this, and be father to him, even though I do not know how. You will have to teach me.”

There was no response, no stirring of her fingers, no change in her breathing.

His eyes closed briefly as he squeezed her hand, then let it drop gently back to her side, continuing to hold it loosely.

Lanaya found him like this, and he was surprised when he looked up to see how dim the light had grown in the clearing during his vigil. Her face was serene, unreadable, but she said, “I know of the ritual you say Marethari performed, but I will need some time to study it and prepare.”

“You will do it then?” Fenris asked, hope sending his heart leaping into his throat.

She nodded. “Yes. In exchange for the arulin’holm, as agreed.”

“Please hurry,” he said, trying to keep the urgency in his tone from becoming threatening, “she doesn’t have much time.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris struggles with the idea of undergoing magic to enter the Fade to find the source of what is troubling Hawke. Aveline, Merrill, Varric, and he enter the Fade and confront barriers keeping them from Hawke.

Fenris adjusted the fit of his baldric, easing how it lay across his shoulder. Donnic chuckled at the fussing. “You keep doing that, it’s going to fall off.”

He shot Donnic a sour smile. “I don’t like magic.”

“Yes,” he said drily, “tell me something I don’t know.”

“I’m only doing this because it’s Hawke.”

“Still not something I don’t know.”

“I’m afraid.”

Instead of a flippant remark, Donnic rested a hand on his shoulder and said seriously, “I know. But you heard what the Keeper and Merrill said. She’s going to need people she trusts over there. Who does she trust more than you?”

“Aveline?”

Donnic snorted. “Get in there and save her. I wish I could help.”

Fenris faced him to clap a hand on Donnic’s shoulder in return, holding it there. “You are helping. Knowing you will be here watching over us is a great comfort to me.”

“Are you two done having your man time?” Aveline interrupted with a raised eyebrow.

Rolling his eyes, Donnic said, “Yes, dear.” Rather than intrude on their private farewell, Fenris drifted away towards Hawke’s side.

Merrill was there already and looked over her shoulder at his approach to give him a nervous smile. “I know you don’t like me, Fenris. But I promise, I’ll do everything I can to help you get Hawke back.”

“No blood magic,” he growled softly.

She nodded. “No blood magic. Hawke wouldn’t like it much if I used it to save her. _Especially_ not to save her.”

“There may be hope for you yet,” he said with mild sarcasm.

“Really?” she asked, brightening.

Normally, he would have said, “No,” but he bit back that retort. If this saved Hawke, then she would have been instrumental in doing so. “We are going to have to rely on you.”

If she’d brightened before, she was positively glowing after he said that. Further conversation was prevented by Lanaya’s approach. “It is time.”

Lanaya arranged them in a circle around Hawke, instructing them to hold hands. He sat cross-legged at her head--Varric at her feet, Aveline on the right, Merrill on the left--and tried to keep his skin from crawling away at the touch of a mage. Braziers were lit, to which herbs and flowers were added, sending up a heady aroma that made him light-headed when he breathed it in. Music started, a drum resonating like the pulse in his veins. Words joined it, weaving between the beats, and the world took on a bluish cast he was familiar with. A flute soared high and ethereal, strange and yet familiar at the same time, and memory began flashing back, of being small, of being young, a kind woman’s hand leading him through the corridors of a palace. From far away, he felt sweat pop on his skin, his heart racing out of time with the drum as adrenaline and fear flooded him. Magic was being done to him, slipping him sideways into the Fade with no sense of control, and he reached for the power of the lyrium tattoos.

“He’s glowing,” a voice murmured hollowly.

“We’re going to lose him,” another said.

Then a familiar voice, Donnic, said thin and tinny, “Let go, Fenris. You have to do it for Hawke.”

Hawke, he thought, and brought up her face in his mind, laughing as she teased him, concentration as she defended herself in combat, the ecstasy when he brought her to climax. He clung to those images, and felt himself rushing through a confusion of others to land with a bump in a watercolor cavern, all smeary, diffuse edges and impossible angles that slid away when he tried to focus on them.

“There you are,” Varric said, his voice strange in the strange place. “We were getting worried. It was like you were there, but not, like...”

“A ghost,” Aveline supplied.

“Where are we?”

“The Fade,” Merrill piped up.

He threw her a glare, and she cringed. Varric poked him in the ribs to break his attention. “Don’t you recognize it?”

At the question, he looked around more, and his eyes went wide. “Darktown.”

“This is the world of dreams,” Merrill said. “The spirits construct places of familiarity that we visit again and again, and make us appear as we see ourselves.” She waved a hand at Aveline. “Which is why she is wearing her guard-captain armor, even though she left it behind months ago. Hawke lived in Kirkwall a long time. See, here,” she pointed to the doors on two adjacent walls, the lintels canted in ways that made his mind hurt. “Anders’s clinic and the door into her mansion. It’s how she entered it the first time.”

“Where is she?”

Merrill looked between the doors. “I don’t know. When we entered Feynriel’s dream, we had to look for him. And there were demons.”

“Of course there were,” Fenris said flatly.

“We’ll need to be careful,” Aveline said. “I...they can be very persuasive.”

“Aveline?” Varric prompted.

“Both Merrill and I fell to their offers,” she admitted. “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”

“Oh, _now_ you tell us.”

“Enough,” Fenris said. “We’re here, and it is done. We need to find Hawke, and the first one of you who makes a deal with a demon, I will run you through.”

Varric smirked. “There’s the Elf we know and love.”

Fenris turned to Merrill. “Do you have a suggestion of how best to find her?”

She shook her head, but then pointed to the door of the estate’s cellars. “That leads to her home. If there was one place she was very familiar with, it would be there.”

He drew his sword and examined it in the surreal non-light of this realm, comforted by the heft of it in his hands--and noticed the red sash around his wrist, vivid in the muted colors of the Fade. The import of it reassured him and made him smile faintly.

“Fenris?” Aveline asked.

He shook his head to clear it then jerked his chin towards the indicated door. “That one.”

The other side of the door was not the wine cellar he expected. Instead, it was a huge cavern, giant natural pillars of stone seeming to hold up a ceiling high above his head that he couldn’t see. In the center of the cavern, a broad plinth had been constructed of rock, stairs leading up to what appeared to be something like an altar. There were no torches that he could see, no lanterns, just an unnerving, sourceless glow.

“We’re not in Kirkwall anymore, Fenris,” Varric noted drily.

“No,” Aveline said in such a sharp tone, they all turned to look at her. “Varric, don’t you recognize this place?”

At the question, Varric looked around, and his eyes widened. “I’ll be…shit. That damn Abandoned Thaig. And that—“

“Is where we found the lyrium idol,” Aveline finished.

Fenris felt a chill go down his spine at the mention of the idol. “What are we doing here?”

Before anyone could answer, a high, mad laugh sounded from behind them, and they whirled. A bearded dwarf stood in a doorway, one hand clutching something that glowed red. He waved it tauntingly. “Thanks for this, Varric. Know that you did good service to House Tethras. I’ll give some money to the Chantry in your memory. Oh, wait. No I won’t.” He cackled in mad fashion again and stepped back. The door began to move.

“Oh no you don’t, Bartrand!” Varric called out in rage, running towards the doorway. “Not this time!”

The rest of them lagged a step behind him, confusion delaying their run for the way out. Varric reached the door first, just as it was about to close, getting an arm into the crack to prevent it from shutting. “Help me!” he called out to Aveline and Fenris, and they did, grabbing onto the edge and leaning back hard, trying to open it more with their weight as Bartrand tried to pull it shut from the other side. Fenris’s feet dug into the pitted surface of the stone floor, his muscles straining as between the three of them, the door inched open enough for Varric to squeeze through. A wordless shout, the thud of two bodies coming together, and a grunt, and suddenly, the door gave, flying open and sending Aveline and Fenris falling to the ground.

“Where is he?” Merrill asked, stepping forward while they picked themselves up and joined her.

Varric and Bartrand were gone.

“Flames,” Aveline swore.

“Quickly,” Fenris said, picking up his sword and sheathing it. “Maybe they’re further in.”

He loped through the tunnel and up a set of crudely carved stairs to another door, bluish runes etched into the frame. This one gave at his touch and he walked through it hesitantly.

On the other side, it was outdoors in an unfamiliar hilly area, a smudge off in the distance that might be a trees but grasslands and bare dirt alternating in patches nearer by. They were on a road clinging to the side of one of those hills, a steep drop-off to his right. It was bright, but there was no discernible sun in the sky.

“What is going on here?” Aveline said with frustration.

Merrill said, “Things in the Fade don’t work like our world. Obviously,” she ended sheepishly.

“What happened to Varric?” Fenris asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe...maybe it was like what happened when we were in Feynriel’s dream. I was thrown out of his mind long before Hawke and Anders were, because...”

“Because you fell to the demon,” Aveline said in a hushed voice. She looked green under her freckles, her eyes haunted. “I did as well. We’re outside of Lothering.”

Merrill frowned and tilted her head in confusion. “Isn’t that where Hawke is from?”

“And near where I met her.”

Fenris narrowed his eyes. “Why are we here?”

Any answer they may have provided was cut off by the sound of fighting coming over the next rise, a clash of metal on metal and a familiar dissonant shrieking. Aveline began running towards it. Fenris glanced around, meeting Merrill’s gaze briefly before rushing after her. Reaching the crest of the hill, a squad of darkspawn was attacking someone in templar armor. "Wesley!" Aveline called out as she hurtled down to engage.

“Aveline!” Fenris roared. It went unheeded.

He tapped into the power of his tattoos, and the world went brighter, the force of the power slamming into him. He staggered, reeling at the unexpected effect, so that Merrill caught up and passed him. Everything seemed more vivid, more tangible, and he recovered to pound down the road, his greatsword shearing two hurlocks in half as he rushed past them.

All was the dance, thrusts, parry, shifting of feet, the sweep of the blade, on and on until a niggling concern broke his concentration. The genlock pounced, and Fenris barely had time to deflect the blow from the rusty blade, taking the creature’s leg off at the knee, then drew himself back. There were just as many now as there were before, the body he just took down vanishing.

“Where are they going?” he bellowed.

“What?” Merrill shrieked back.

“The darkspawn. Where are the corpses? Why do they never end?”

None of them were coming after him. He withdrew further, back up the road, panting as he watched the ebb and flow of the battle. The darkspawn seemed focused solely on Aveline and the man she fought back-to-back with, unless Merrill hit one with magic or staff. Then, that one would turn to attack them, until it went down and dissolved away. “Stop attacking!” he shouted out.

“What?” Merrill yelled again.

“Stop attacking! Trust me!”

She shot him a look of pure disbelief, but did as she was asked, holding her staff before her but not firing. As Fenris had observed, the darkspawn left them unmolested.. “Aveline!” Fenris shouted at her again. “Aveline!”

But Aveline ignored him, fighting on and on, hewing and hacking and slashing at the darkspawn around her.

“I don’t think she can hear us,” Merrill said, realization in her voice.

Fenris growled. “We can’t just leave her here.”

But as they watched, Aveline and the entire fight vanished.

“What---“

“I...don’t know,” Merrill replied. “We...I’ve heard of something like this before. In the stories of the Ferelden King. A construct of the demon, set up to protect itself and keep us out.”

“We need to find a way out of here, and hope we can find them and Hawke.” He turned and walked back up the rise, to discover the door they came through was gone.

“Now what?” Merrill sighed.

His mouth twisting, Fenris said, “We continue on the road, I guess. That way,” he hooked a thumb, indicating the direction where Aveline disappeared.

The way was brown, dull, featureless, scrub brush and dusty hills, with a haze of something that looked like smoke not far from them. They trudged down the path for an uncertain amount of time--it was hard to judge with no sun in the sky--when a door appeared in the middle of the road, an arching stone lintel carved with archaic letters that glowed with a faint blue light. Fenris stopped in his tracks, nostrils flaring in wariness. “Just like the last one.”

“We go through, I guess,” Merrill said, walking up to the archway, reaching out a hand towards the runes but stopping short of touching. “I feel like I should know these words, but I don’t recognize them.”

“What do you think will be on the other side?” Fenris asked her.

She shrugged. “Given our experiences so far...no idea. Only way to find out is to pass through.”

Fenris rolled his eyes, then schooled himself back to the task at hand. “Very well. Stay close.” He stepped through the portal.

His feet touched rock floor again, around him the walls of a cavern, stalactites and stalagmites straining towards union, but different, smaller, than the one from the Deep Roads. He was becoming used to the eeriness of light with no source, as his eyes could clearly make out the details. “Every place we’ve been has been familiar to someone. Do you know this place?” he asked Merrill.

“Yes,” she said in a voice so small he barely heard it.

An abomination emerged from behind the rocky pile towards the back of the cavern, twice as tall and three times as wide as they were, the puckered skin around its leering face marked with lines of “Vallaslin,” Fenris breathed. The abomination chuckled mockingly as it raised its hands towards them; Merrill shrieked, and Fenris made a grab at her. “No! Don’t!”

But the butt end of Merrill’s staff came up and electricity came sizzling out, slamming into the monster. It smoked at the impact, a chunk flying off of it. Another streak of light crashed into it, filling his vision. When it cleared, like Varric and Aveline, Merrill was gone.

He swore in every language he knew, and some he didn’t, until the rage had abated back to a dull simmer. She of all people should have not taken the bait, but she had, and now he was alone in the spirit world. The world of magic, the last place he ever wanted to be. He clenched his fists, looked around for the exit that he expected to see, and found it up a sloped path behind him. Taking a deep breath, he walked up it and through the cave mouth, warned by the blue lettering around it for the shift in scenery.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alone in the Fade, Fenris finds Hawke and confronts the spirit holding her captive. Unpleasant truths are revealed, and Fenris has to make a decision in a no-win situation.

He stumbled to the floor on the other side, pain lancing his hands and knees as he fell. Springing to a defensive crouch, he looked around a dusty plateau, a view not unlike where Aveline disappeared.

“Fenris, what are you doing here?”

Hawke. He’d finally found her. Relief closed up his throat and he took a step towards her before realizing she was not alone. Leandra, Bethany, and Aveline, he recognized. The man wearing the crest of the templars on his breastplate and the boy with the greatsword on his back, he did not. He hesitated in his approach. “I came looking for you.”

Hawke bridged her fingers across her brow, massaging at the skin as if her head pained her. Confusion was in her expression and her voice as she said, “You’re not supposed to be...here. This isn’t how it happened.”

“How what happened?”

A familiar basso roar cut off any further conversation, an ogre cresting the hill from the other side accompanied by a score of hurlocks. Reflexively, Fenris pulled his sword, as did everyone but Leandra, the templar, who looked as if he was one step removed from the grave, and Bethany, who instead brandished a staff. But before anyone could move, the boy rushed forward with a defiant yell. With sudden clarity, Fenris knew what he was witnessing. The ogre smashed Carver’s body to the ground, bloody, and Hawke screamed, closing to engage with it. When it flung her to the side, Fenris snarled and raced in, slicing it from shoulder to hip cross-wise, reversing the momentum in a twist of his wrist to slice the tendons of its great knee. It bellowed and fell. Hawke leapt atop its shoulders, and balancing there, drew her daggers outwards across the brute’s neck, slicing through so that it collapsed in a bloody pool.

“Carver, my poor boy...” Leandra wailed over the corpse. Hawke, grim-faced and angry, was the only thing that remained solid as everything around them faded, blurring into a uniform grey. Objects began to emerge from the nothing, sharpening into focus. A wrecked room, Aveline, Varric, Anders, a dwarf he recognized only because Varric had screamed his name as he chased him.

“He killed Bethany,” Hawke said, voice oddly distant. “His hand wasn’t on the dagger, but if Bartrand hadn’t trapped us in the Deep Roads for his own greed, then maybe she wouldn’t have been tainted. Maybe we could’ve found a way to cure her.” She took a step, from the last pool of grey onto the tiled floor of the room, and her expression changed, hardened. “Put him out of his misery, Varric.”

Varric plunged the knife into his brother’s chest, and Bartrand crumpled to the floor.

Again the surroundings went grey, coalescing into a cavern under Kirkwall. Hawke launched herself at an older man standing next to Gascard DuPuis, screaming as she simultaneously slit his throat and disemboweled him in a giant sweep of her daggers, then reversed the hilts to stab DuPuis in the chest before the man had time to open his mouth. Blood drenched her, and Fenris barely had time to notice a pale caricature of Leandra, in a white dress and veil, begin lurching towards them before the scene faded once more. Again it brightened, to a plain on the Wounded Coast and he saw himself laying unconscious in the middle of the clearing amongst a group of mages and templars, and Hawke entered the scene to cut down the tattooed woman, Grace. Jump again, and with the flames of the Chantry painting the sky red, Hawke drove her dagger into Anders’s back.

When the grey faded once more, it was into an area Fenris didn’t recognize. A cottage or small house, a cheery fire on the hearth, a table and four chairs to one side. He glanced over to Hawke, who was eyeing the room with a deep etched grief, then looked over to him. “This is where you’re supposed to be,” she told him, as two boys tumbled through the front door. They were of an age, but Fenris had a hard time determining what age that was, because they looked... _off_ , neither like the elven children of the slaves in Tevinter nor the human children he saw in Kirkwall. Black-haired, when they ran up to Hawke he saw the strong family resemblance, although one had blue eyes, the other green. “Go wash up for dinner,” Hawke said to them.

“Aw, Mama,” they complained, but went out the back door while Hawke went to the hearth and stirred the contents of a pot dangling from a hook.

“Hello, Fenris,” a voice rumbled from Fenris’s right shoulder.

Fenris slewed his head around and growled. “Anders.” He had seen this form only once, briefly, but recognized it from the others’ description. Blue light crazed the surface of his skin like liquid rock under cooling lava and glowed from where his eyes should be. It was Anders’s voice with something deep, resonant under it, as if they spoke in constant unison.

“Justice,” the entity corrected.

“You wear Anders’s appearance,” Fenris snarled.

“Here in the Fade, he is joined with me, even in his death.”

Fenris’s lip curled. “Semantics. What are you doing to her?”

“Justice,” he repeated.

“I should just kill you right now.”

“Then I will have justice.”

“And if I don’t kill you?”

Justice repeated in monotone. “I will have justice.”

Fenris paced away to a corner of the room, dropping to a crouch to think. Justice made no move towards Hawke, who now seemed oblivious to Fenris’s presence. The two boys scrambled back in and took seats at the table. “Are we going to go out and learn magic today, Papa?” the blue-eyed boy asked, looking at Justice as if he was the most normal thing in the world.

“As long as your mother says it is okay, Malcolm,” Justice answered, ruffling the boy’s hair. Briefly, the boy’s eyes flashed with blue light, startling Fenris to his feet.

“I wish I had magic,” the green-eyed boy groused. “He does, why don’t I?”

“Because that’s not how it works, Carver,” Hawke replied, bringing bowls of stew to the table. “We’ve been over that.”

“It’s not fair,” the one called Carver said with a pout, kicking the table leg.

 _Think_ , Fenris told himself. _Think!_ He railed against being left alone in this place, but screaming at the unfairness of it wouldn’t free her from Justice’s grasp. Her _and_ the boys, he realized, with a punch to the gut. They’d called her Mama. Her children. He looked over them again, as they ate in relative silence, and saw in them Hawke, the resemblance to the boy killed by the ogre, but placed the oddity he’d noticed to the slenderness of their build, the angularity of their face.

 _His_ sons.

His hand twitched towards the hilt of his sword, and Justice gave him a sidelong glance. No. _No_. Not Justice. Vengeance. Anders had called the spirit that at times towards the end. No longer Justice, he was more demon than virtue, and all demons wanted one thing, to be free of the Fade, to join with a host in the other world. The scenes he’d experienced since crossing the Veil replayed themselves in his mind, of anger, of death, of dying, and Varric and Aveline and Merrill and Hawke slaying the slayer, the anger that fueled them. The need for revenge.

She was a hairsbreadth away from Vengeance already.

For that matter, so was he.

He saw the trap and no way out of it.

“’Papa’?” he spat, glaring at Justice, interrupting the activity at the table. All eyes went to him.

“You were not here, and it’s a difficult thing to raise two small children by yourself,” Justice explained.

“Fenris, what are you doing here?” Hawke asked, rising from her chair to stand. She edged forward and put herself between him and the one called Carver.

“I came here to save you,” Fenris said, sadness crushing him. “You are trapped in the Fade. This,” he wave a hand towards Justice, “is a demon. You know that. Anders knew that. He wants a body. Your body. His,” he said, pointing to the blue-eyed boy and felt a stab through his heart. “Anything he can get into. I will not let you have them,” he said, swiveling his focus onto Justice.

“It is only a matter of time,” Justice said, the certainty in his tone taunting Fenris into wanting to mar that implacable expression, “and time is no object in the Fade. She is close to giving in.”

“Her body is wasting away in the real world. How long can you inhabit a corpse? She’s _dying_. And if she dies, so will he.”

“Then I will have justice.”

The enormity of the plan squeezed his chest, making it difficult to breathe. Hawke had no such issue, and rounded on Justice, “Anders, what are you talking about?”

Fenris cut off Justice’s response. “This is _my_ family. Take me instead.”

While Justice tilted his head as if to consider, Hawke crossed the room and pulled daggers down from the display over the mantle. “No one is taking anyone.”

“Hawke--don’t,” Fenris warned.

Her blue eyes were hard as she glared at Justice. “This is new, talking of the Fade and dying. I’m in it, aren’t I? This isn’t real. You’re...dead.”

“Anders is dead,” Justice said complacently.

“You...” her mouth worked.

Fenris had barely a moment to react, some glimmer of change in her expression alerting him before she shrieked and threw herself at Justice, who made no attempt to move. Reflexively, he opened himself to the power of his tattoos, forgetting their strange behavior in this place that made everything feel more _real_ , but gritted his teeth against the disorientation to sweep a hand out, channeling energy to knock her aside before she could reach Justice. He took the moment’s respite to pull his sword, the veins glowing a bright gold against the black metal.

“What are you doing, Fenris, why are you protecting him?”

She hurtled towards Justice again, and Fenris brought the blade up, aiming it to knock the daggers aside with a metallic screech. “I’m not,” he managed to get out, before she was dancing aside, smaller blades twisting in her hands as she tried to reach Justice around him. A sudden poof of smoke fogged his view He had no idea how her chemical tricks could work here, but they apparently did. He lost her in the haze. “I’m protecting you.” His eyes darted as he took up a defensive position, sword held across his body as he circled Justice. “He wants you.” Motion caught the corner of his eye and he whirled towards it, deflecting the attack. She melted back into the mist, which he scanned again. “He wants the boy.” _There_ , he shifted his weight and sent another blast where he thought she was. “Our _son_.”

“All the more reason,” she said, her voice coming behind him, leaving him scrambling to put himself between her and Justice. He had just gotten into position when she appeared, blades barely visible at the speed she was jabbing and feinting, and ringing filled his ears. He didn’t want to hurt her, and that hampered much of his abilities, honed so much for attack, not defense. She tagged his arm, his side, but he kept at it, stubbornly interposing himself to her increasing frustration, panting with the exertion. Until his sword swept towards her. In a moment’s panic he pulled the blow, realizing he had aimed for killing. In that hesitation, she struck, finding the opening left in his defenses and buried the dagger to the hilt in Justice’s belly.

The gaze Justice turned on them was hideous, a death skull rictus of triumph as he collapsed to his knees. He began to dissolve, his form losing coherency, and blue light began creeping up the blade of Hawke’s dagger still held in place by her hand. With horror, Fenris said, “Drop it!”

“I can’t,” she said, panic making her voice high.

Fenris seized the blade below her hand against the advancing blue. “I said take me. Leave her be!”

Justice seemed to sneer, his features almost completely obscured by the dissolution, but there was a sudden hitch in his expression, a lessening of the glow surrounding him. His body jerked on the blade, away from Fenris, surprise in his dropped jaw, then another, tearing him off so he fell to his side. “No,” Justice growled, but his body convulsed, kicking a stool over that clattered across the floor. The blue was fading along with the rest of his body, becoming insubstantial. “No!”

A high-pitched piercing cry split the air, and Fenris’s head snapped to it. Malcolm had fallen to his knees, his hands to his head, blood running from his nose and ears. With a twitch and a shudder that mirrored in Justice, he folded in on himself in a heap.

“Malcolm? Malcolm!” Hawke cried out, rushing to his side, but Fenris looked down at Justice, sword point at his throat.

Not that it was likely to do any good. The blue glow had winked out, and what was left behind had the translucency of a ghost, growing fainter as he watched. The features looked at peace, almost happy, and a disturbing thought occurred to him. “Anders?”

The spirit’s chin dipped in a nod Fenris wasn’t sure he actually saw. The voice was Anders’s, absent the menacing undertone. Fenris had to strain to hear him, barely a sigh of wind nearly inaudible under Hawke’s keening. “Gone. Tried...stopped...tell her...”

He winked out.

Fenris looked around the cottage, as if Justice, or Anders, might suddenly reappear, but then went to Hawke’s side. Malcolm was gone as well, but Hawke was kneeling where he’d been, bowed over on herself. The boy, Carver, stood off to one side, looking confused, but Fenris joined her on the ground and put a hand to her back. She didn’t react, which frightened him, and he began rubbing small circles along her spine as he spoke. “Hawke. Marian,” he corrected himself, tone softening. She glanced over at him for it, eyes red but dry. “We need to leave this place. You need to come back to us. To me.” His breath rattled in his chest as he inhaled. “I need you.”

“You left. Again.”

Such simple words, but the depth of her grief came through her voice, and nearly broke him. “I would never truly have left you. I told you that at the Gallows, and I meant it. But I was a fool, again and again.” He looked up at where Carver watched them with green eyes old beyond his years, realizing with a shock that they were the same color as his own. His words were for Hawke, but Fenris didn’t look away from the boy. “I never knew what having a family was, but I want to know it.” He broke eye contact, to look back at her. “With you. But you have to come back.”

“Will he be there?” she asked.

She was beginning to turn misty, as was the room, Carver dissolving more rapidly than the rest. Nervous flutters filled Fenris’s belly, but he found her hand and squeezed it hard. “I don’t know. We’ll have to find out together.”

“You had better be there,” she said, voice faint. “I l--“

He woke up.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ends are tied up, a conclusion is reached, and the rest of Varric's words to Cassandra come true: events pull the rest of the companions away from Hawke's side, except Fenris.

“How is she?” Fenris asked Lanaya, hands clenched in agitation.

She gave him a tight-lipped smile as she finished her examination but shook her head, waving a hand to indicate he should follow her out of the shelter. She paused at the flap to say a few quiet words to her First, then outside said to Aveline, Merrill, Varric and Donnic, “She is sleeping, but I think it would do her good to have her friends around her, if you would like to go in.” They threw Fenris questioning looks, but he nodded to them, and they ducked in while Lanaya led him a little further away.

Fenris gave her a hard look. “What is it?”

Sadness came into her expression. “She is fine. Weak, as was to be expected, but she should recover with food and time. It is the babes.” Cold certainty swept through him, her words confirming it. “I scanned her before, as you know. I detected two, then” she said with not a little awe. “I can only sense one now, and that one, only because I healed her, or I think she may have lost both.”

He staggered, feeling keenly a loss for something he’d only been aware he’d had for those few, brief moments in the Fade. He found it difficult to speak through a throat gone tight, voice breaking before he inhaled a breath and tried to gather control. “But the one, he is...”

“Fine. For now,” she cautioned. She studied him in silence until he grew uncomfortable, which she broke with, “Go to her. She may need you most of all.”

“When will she wake up?”

“Any moment? Tomorrow? I don’t know,” she added with a helpless shrug. “She needs rest. And when she wakes, she needs to eat.”

Upon returning, Donnic looked at his face and put a hand to Fenris’s shoulder, which he was grateful for but couldn’t bear to acknowledge. Aveline waved a hand to Merrill, rising from her seat on the ground, and also quietly touched Fenris’s arm as she passed out of the shelter, leaving him alone.

He brought his knees up to his chest, folded his arms across them, and buried his face to weep in silence.

#####

“Fenris?”

His head jerked up from where he’d slept, still pillowed on his forearms. He rubbed his bleary eyes and reached to take her hand between his. “I am here.”

“Where is ‘here’?”

“We’re with the Dalish.”

“Marethari’s clan?”

He shook his head, the motion clearing some of the cobwebs from his mind. Her disorientation concerned him. “No, we are in Ferelden. We found a clan in the Brecillian Forest.”

“Oh,” she said, going quiet.

“You’re supposed to eat,” he said awkwardly.

“I’m not sure if I’m hungry. I had a strange dream. It...” Her free hand went to cover her eyes.

“You need to try to eat anyway.”

She gave him a puzzled look, but then struggled to a seated position with his help, an effort that left her grey-faced. It was an odd thing, having to help her eat the broth and bread they’d left, but in the end she finished everything and sighed. She curved an arm over her midsection, and her eyes went wide when he laid his hand below it.

“What happened?” she asked, sounding stronger for the meal.

He told her, recounting most of what had happened in the Fade, save what had happened to the specter called Malcolm. He watched her carefully at his omission. She was frowning in confusion, rubbing a hand across her forehead in a gesture he remembered from the Fade. “Do you need healing?” he asked.

“No, just...everything is hazy. The boys, Carver, Malcolm...were they...?”

“Possibly,” he said, his fingers spreading wide to splay across her abdomen. “It was the Fade.” Cautiously, he added, “I don’t know how real what we see there is.”

“Justice,” she said, bitterness coloring her tone. “He did this?”

“I suspect,” he said, relieved she’d been properly distracted from talk of Malcolm. “The Keeper thinks the idea is sound.”

“And you defeated him?”

Fenris dropped his gaze. “No.” He almost told the truth, that she had, but bit it back, instead saying carefully, “Anders did, at the end.”

“Anders?” she breathed, in shock.

“At least, I think it was him.” He shook his head. “I think he stopped Justice from doing whatever he planned on doing.” Tears fell from her eyes, and he panicked, squeezing her hand. “I have said too much. The Keeper said you should be resting.”

“No,” she said, “I’m glad you told me. But I probably _should_ rest some more,” she conceded and lay back down on the blankets. “You’re not going anywhere, are you?”

He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed the back of it fiercely. “No. Never.”

#####

Fenris meant the words, but it didn’t stop him from thinking about what he’d seen in the Fade, with Justice--or Anders--acting as father to the boys and...he didn’t want to think of what other role he may have played in the dream scenario to her. It nagged at him, enough so that late the next day, when she was beginning to show signs of recovering, he sat next to her and drew his knees up. “There is a thing I must ask you,” he said, unable to meet her eyes.

“Yes, I would kill for some blackberries. Possibly actually kill,” she said with a small tilt to her head, then sighed forlornly. “But it’s too early in the spring. They won’t be ripe here until midsummer at the soonest.” He blinked, and she laughed at the surprise in his expression. It was good to hear her laughter, but not necessarily at his expense. Before he could recover from his discomfit, she added, “You’re in your ‘I have serious business to discuss and may not like it’ posture. Am _I_ not going to like it?” she added, lightness failing to mask her uneasiness.

His back straightened, and he looked down at how he was seated, briefly irritated at how easily she read him,. But he said, “The ab--” He stopped himself and said with effort, “Anders. Justice. Vengeance.”

She nodded slowly, expression turning wary. “What about them? Him.” Her mouth twitched in distaste at her correction.

“In your dream,” he started then paused, having difficulty speaking his thoughts. “The dream I found you in, you did not seem to know it was Vengeance. Only the a--Anders. You seemed...happy.” His lips curled with remembered anger. Jealousy. Before she could speak, he rushed on. “Then there was the other dream, that night--” He couldn’t continue, but her widened eyes told him she knew of what he spoke. “You were always close, sometimes it seemed you enjoyed his company more than mine, especially there, before the end. Did you--did he--”

He stumbled off, and they sat in silence for the few moments before she put out her hand, uncurling the fingers upwards to reveal her palm. The motion caught the corner of his eye, and he turned to look at it, then her, seeing the invitation to take it writ plain in her face. Hesitantly, he lifted his hand to cover hers, and the fingers folded over to capture his hand lightly. “You, all of you--well, most of you,” she said with a bemused smile that faded as she said with gravity, “had things I was attracted to. Varric had his sense of humor and his outlook on life. Sebastian had serenity,” her smile quirked again, “except when he didn’t. Anders, well, I felt a kind of kinship with Anders. He reminded me in some ways of my father.” He threatened to withdraw his hand, and her fingers tightened, holding him unless he wanted to rip free. He considered it but relinquished, and she continued, “And then there was you. I was attracted to your fierceness, your cunning, your desire to live a free life. And you wanted _me_. Wanted me to be part of it.” She shook her head. “Anders? No, never.”

“Never?” he prodded, not quite ready to believe her.

She gave him a frown, and her voice became clipped with annoyance. “Even if he had been interested in me in that way, his possession by Justice would always have been there between us. And it became clear the more I got to know him that, for Anders, his cause was first and foremost. I loved him, like a brother, like my sister, if she’d have lived to see what became of Kirkwall,” she said, tone turning bleak, and it was his turn to squeeze her hand, trying to comfort. “In the end, Vengeance used our friendship as just another tool to achieve his goals, used and discarded. Even if I had spared Anders, I don’t think I could have ever forgiven him for that.” She drew in a ragged breath and let it out in a sigh. “I waited three years for you. How could you even _think_ I would be pining for him, especially now that he’s dead?”

Shame overcame him, and he looked away, although he didn’t loosen his hold on her hand. He felt strength flow through the connection, her touch. “Because you are a beautiful woman,” he finally said when he could speak again. “I never saw you with anyone else, but you might have, could have--” He stuttered to a stop.

“I didn’t,” she said, with such conviction he looked back to her. Her gaze on him was steady. “If you had a crest, I would wear it. Maybe a tattoo?” she asked, eyeing his with such avid interest a thin smile threatened to turn up the corners of his mouth. “Isabela said sailors do that all the time for the girls they love. I could get one like yours. I could see uses to being able to phase my hand into things. I’ll leave exploding people’s hearts to you, though.”

“Enough,” he said, bemused out of his mood, and brought her hand up to his lips. “I am sorry. It seems I continue to act the fool with you. Will you...be patient with me?”

Gently, she curled her fingers into a loose fist and nudged his jaw, miming a punch. She smiled. “As if I haven’t been already?”

#####

Hawke recovered, ready to leave her pallet after a week and complaining about it for three days before Lanaya allowed it.

Fenris was watching Merrill and Aveline fawn over Hawke with the baby things they’d purchased from Master Varathorn when Lanaya pulled him aside and said “I think it would be best for both of them if you were to stay with us for a while, possibly until the babe is born,”

He turned to her in surprise. “You would do that?”

“For you? Yes. You are elvhen. For her? Normally, no, but...these are not normal times. You will have to work to provide for the clan, just as any other Dalish would.”

“What of the others?”

Merrill’s laughter trilled at something Aveline said, her hands going to cover her mouth. Lanaya’s eyes narrowed, turning thoughtful. “Orana, of course, just as you, if she wishes to stay and work with the clan. Merrill, the others…you should perhaps ask if they wish to stay first.”

He nodded, half in a daze. “I...thank you.”

They did wish to, Aveline saying, “Hawke is my family. You would have to throw me out kicking and screaming to keep me away from her while she’s going through this,” and Donnic had nodded in agreement. Varric had made noises about not leaving until the story was done, but Fenris had noticed the way he had been chatting up Varathorn and studying his goods with gold coins glittering in his eyes.

It had taken some convincing, Merrill speaking of Hawke’s services for Marethari and Asha’bellanar, until the clan grudgingly agreed to allow the shemlens and durgenlen to travel with them for a time. The companions from Kirkwall continued to pitch their tents outside the Dalish camp proper, sharing in the work and allowing Hawke to stay under the supervision of Lanaya with Merrill working with her. But there were no more strange incidents, and the sleeping she did do was considered normal.

It was late summer when Hawke’s labor began, and after a fretful night and another half a day, she gave birth to a baby boy. Fenris met Lanaya’s gaze from where he knelt at Hawke’s head, and understanding passed between. She nodded with sorrow and folded the afterbirth with Malcolm’s remains in a hide to be buried in the forest. Hawke didn’t ask of the second child from the Fade, so Fenris kept his silence.

Hawke asked wearily, “What shall we call him?”

He covered the crown of the boy’s head with his hand and said without needing to think, “Carver.”

It earned him an odd glance, but her expression softened as she looked down at the infant’s face. “My brother’s name. Yes…” She smiled. “He’d probably have fits to know his nephew was half-elven, but it pleases me.” She kissed Carver’s forehead, and Fenris put his arm around her waist, his head on her shoulder, in awe of this child, his child, but privately mourning the twin.

“You should hold him,” she said suddenly.

He lifted his head sharply, his arm dropping away “What?”

She twisted around, offering Carver out. “Hold him.”

Fenris took him, trying to position the small bundle in his arms the way he’d seen Hawke do it, but it seemed awkward, until she helped settle Carver’s head in the crook of Fenris’s elbow. Carver squirmed, and Fenris wrapped his other arm around to prevent him from falling away. He asked in alarm, “What if I drop him?

“You won’t,” Hawke said with such certainty warmth welled up in him.

Cradling him, awe crept in, and Fenris examined Carver’s face as if to memorize it, from the thin layer of dark hair on his head, the little crescents of his eyebrows, thick eyelashes resting on his cheeks, tiny nose, the pursed lips, the delicacy of his features. He loosened a hand to run a finger around his ear, tracing the faint point that kept it from being round, and therefore truly human like Hawke’s. Carver didn’t stir, sleeping deeply.

“Your son,” Hawke said in reverent undertone, snuggling against Fenris’s side.

“My son,” he repeated, feeling the reality of it settle on him like a weight that he found, once there, was welcome. So many things he wanted to say, but all he could tell her was, “Thank you.”

“Well, it’s not exactly like I did anything special, I—“

“Marian?” he interrupted.

“Yes, love?”

Her use of the word set off another burst of emotion in his chest that threatened to overwhelm him. He composed himself by kissing her forehead. “Thank you for giving me a family.”

#####

It was two weeks later that Hawke announced herself fit to travel, child or no child. “Besides, if we don’t leave now, the snows will catch us.”

“Where will we go?”

She put Carver to her shoulder, rubbing his back. “Gwaren, first. Coming to Ferelden was a mistake, you were right. We can catch a ship there to somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“Where would you suggest? There’s no rush to answer. We don’t need to decide until we get there.”

It took them a day to prepare, purchasing supplies with their dwindling coin and feasting with the Dalish that night. After returning to their tents, Merrill drew Hawke aside, shifting on her feet nervously. Hawke watched her with some bemusement, then prompted, “What is it?”

“We’re not going with you,” she blurted out.

Fenris’s eyebrows climbed, but it was Hawke who asked, “You’re staying? You and Orana?”

Merrill twisted her fingers together. “I’ve had long talks with Lanaya about what happened in the Free Marches. I can’t undo what I did, but I can try to make up for it. She said Keeper Zathrian also used blood magic, but that he was basically a good man. She’s willing to let me stay and learn more about controlling my magic, as long as I promise not to use it again.” She met Hawke’s gaze with luminous eyes. “I have learned so much from you, Hawke. You were right, I should have listened sooner.”

Hawke drew her into a one-armed embrace, hugging her tightly. “The Maker—I guess the Creators,” she corrected herself with a wry smile, “watch over you.”

The rest of them left the next morning, leaving Merrill and Orana holding hands as the Dalish bade them farewell. Fenris caught Varric wiping a hand across his cheeks. “Are you okay?”

“Just something in my eye, is all.”

“I hear daisy pollen is bad for that.”

Varric guffawed. “Me, too, Elf. Me, too.”

The nights had started to become chilly, the southern autumn firmly marching towards winter by the time they reached Gwaren several days later. They found shelter in a rundown inn near the docks, where Aveline asked over dinner in the common room, “Hawke, what are your plans?”

Hawke looked to Fenris, who nodded once and said to Aveline, “To go somewhere else, if we can sail out.”

Aveline grimaced and glanced at Donnic before saying, “We won’t be accompanying you.”

“What?” Hawke asked in shock.

“I love you like the sister I never had,” Aveline said, “but we want to have a family, and I can’t do that on the run. They’re looking for you, not me. Gwaren should be big enough that we can disappear into it without notice.”

“Are you…?” Hawke started, trailing off with eyes widened, and squealed when Aveline smiled ruefully and nodded. “That’s wonderful!”

Donnic put an arm around Aveline’s shoulders. She said, “I just wish our children could grow up together.”

“Me, too,” Hawke said, reaching across the table to squeeze Aveline’s callused hand.

“Well,” Varric said, interrupting the maternal bonding, “I guess this is as good a time as any to say that I won’t be coming with you, either, wherever it is. Unless that’s Kirkwall, which I seriously doubt.” His blunt fingers traced the grain of the table. “I miss being a merchant. My house is probably a mess. And I have a new contract to trade goods with Varathorn. _No_ one in all the Free Marches has an agreement like that. I’ll be rolling in it.” He took a long drink from his ale mug, then plunked it down on the table. “It’s been a year, long enough that I should be able to slip back in.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Fenris asked.

“Elf, I think leaving my house to those idiot cousins of mine is the most foolish thing I could do. Not following you around the back end of the world, mind you, because I’m not _that_ stupid. We needed to get out of there for a while. But I need to go back now.”

“Varric, if you go back, the templars will find you. You’re too well known there,” Hawke cautioned.

“And I can also buy protection, without having to worry about the rest of you. Trust me, Hawke, I was taking care of myself long before I ever ran into you in Hightown.”

The grin she gave him was laced with sorrow. “I do trust you. I just worry about you.”

“I know,” Varric said, patting her hand. “That’s what makes you you.”

Varric found a ship bound for Denerim two days later, and they went out to the docks to say goodbye. He exchanged a handshake with Donnic then looked up at Aveline. “You still scare the shit out of me, Red. You’re going to be a terror of a mother to your children.”

“They’ll grow up with good morals, obey the law, and a healthy respect for dwarven merchants.”

Varric sighed. “They’re all going to blame _me_ for that loss of coin.”

Offering a hand out, Fenris said, “Take care, Varric.”

“You too, Fenris. I’d say take care of her, but I know you will. Now.”

Fenris’s eyebrows went up, then he quirked a smile. “I shall.”

He took Carver from Hawke so that she could throw both arms around Varric, who patted her on the back. “I know, I know. Women adore me, men want to be me. Except maybe you. You were the best story I’ve ever told, Hawke.”

“I was just trying to live,” she said, sniffling.

“Yeah, but the story is the good parts around the living. Stop having good parts, now that I’m not around to tell them, eh?”

She laughed around her tears. “If the rest of my life can be dull and boring, I’ll do it, just for you.”

“That’s my girl,” Varric said, with an odd strain to his normally mellifluous voice. He hitched his pack up on his shoulder and walked up the plank, pausing to turn and wave, then disappeared onto the deck.

Several more days passed and Hawke and he still lingered. Donnic was hired on as a guard on the docks, and he and Aveline moved into a tiny house nearby, little more than a shack, but it was clean and it was theirs. When it became two weeks, Aveline stopped by the tavern and demanded, “What are you waiting for?”

“You’ll see,” Hawke replied with a veiled smile.

The mystery resolved itself another week later when a boat came into dock, and a familiar captain swung into the tavern. “Hello, Hawke.”

“Glad you could make it, Isabela.”

They caught up over dinner, Isabela exclaiming over Aveline and Donnic’s news and threatening yearly returns to corrupt their offspring, and Aveline threatening to fit a chastity belt on Isabela and toss the key into the sea. Isabela also cooed over the baby. “What’s his name?”

“Carver,” Hawke said.

“He’s a cutie.” She glanced between Hawke and Fenris and grinned. “He’s probably going to grow up pretty, too.”

“He is also a bit young for you,” Fenris said, flexing his fist and studying the tattoos on the back. “And has a protective father.”

“Spoilsport,” Isabela pouted.

Aveline slid into fill the gap before it grew awkward, “So, Isabela, what brings you to Gwaren? Pleasure cruise in fall through templar-infested waters?”

Isabela pointed at Hawke. “She did. The templars in Denerim did follow me for a time, just as she planned, but they got bored when I put in at Rivain. That, or they didn’t want to deal with those who don’t follow their faith. The Rivaini get so stuffy about things like that.”

“You’re Rivaini,” Aveline pointed out.

“And do I never not get stuffy about the templars?” Isabela countered with a wink.

“Point.”

Hawke said with a dip of her chin, “Thanks for that,”

“Tit for tat,” Isabela said with a negligent wave. “I’m on the sea again, it’s no real hardship.” To Aveline, she said, “She asked me to put in here in the fall, just in case, so here I am.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“I thought as much. Where to?”

“It’ll have to wait until we’re on the ship. I don’t want the wrong ears hearing.”

“You’re getting suspicious in your old age,” Isabela said. “It’s about damn time.”

It was three days before they could leave, waiting for Isabela to off-load her cargo and swap out crew. With time growing short, Hawke and Aveline spent as much time together as possible, Fenris and Donnic visited the tavern every evening, not really talking, but playing Diamondback or Wicked Grace with Isabela until the small hours of the morning.

They gathered on the docks in the pre-dawn, an icy fog dampening the beginning of the morning to add to their despondent mood. Hawke and Aveline embraced, and Fenris grasped forearms with Donnic before Isabela took her due. “It’s been a long and strange road, Hawke,” Aveline said. “I would have stayed with you, if I could.”

“I know, Aveline,” she replied. “But you and Donnic have sacrificed enough as it is. Have your family. I know how important it is to you.”

“ _You_ are my family,” Aveline said fiercely, eyes glinting.

Hawke threw her arm around Aveline’s neck, hugging tightly. “I know,” she said, voice scratchy. “And maybe someday we’ll come back and find you.”

“Not if I find you first,” Aveline said in warning, stepping back into Donnic’s waiting arms.

They stayed on the docks, watching as the ship sailed out until the mist swallowed them from view. Fenris stood on the deck with his arm around Hawke's waist and turned and kissed her shoulder while she soothed a fussy Carver. She said in a wistful voice, “I can’t imagine I’ll ever be back here.”

He hesitated before replying. “Probably not.”

They climbed the stairs to join Isabela on the poop deck, watching the activity on the ship in silence for some time until weak sunlight broke through the clouds, beginning to burn off the fog.

“Where to?” Isabela asked, handing the wheel over to the helmsmen.

Hawke glanced over at Fenris, and he nodded, answering, “Rivain.”

Isabela grimaced, before realization cleared her expression. “Right. Elves, and no Andrastians.”

He smiled. “Correct.”

“I was just there,” she complained. “And you’re going to make me winter there. The things I do for our friendship, Hawke.” She put her fingers to her mouth and sounded a piercing whistle. “Oy, you blighters! Put your backs into it! We’re making for sunny skies and a warm winter!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: If you’ve read this far, I want to thank you for it. :) It’s been a long, hard road for me writing this, the longest fic I’ve ever written, and getting it ready to share with everyone—but sharing it with everyone is what drove me to finish it.
> 
> But! It’s not quite done yet.
> 
> The writing of these last two chapters caused me a lot of heartache and grief, because I couldn’t decide how best to end the story. The version you’ve read so far, above, was the version I decided on…by the slimmest of margins.
> 
> During the beta process, however, I waffled (mmmm,waffles).
> 
> So, on Monday, there will be a bonus chapter posted: the ‘alternate ending’ that I wavered between, as well as the opportunity to ask me any questions you have about anything in the story. Please check back then if you’re interested. :)


	13. Alternate Ending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As mentioned at the note at the end of Chapter 12, the following is an alternate version of that chapter, with a slightly different ending. It came about because of some wavering on my part and some conflicting feedback from my betas and test readers—rather than making a one and done decision, I decided “Why not?” and wrote both versions. Readers of both will notice strong parallels if not outright duplication between the two chapters (they’re intended to be read ‘one or the other’), but there will be enough differences in the first half (along with a bit more explanation of what was going on) to not be too tedious (I hope).
> 
> The previously posted Chapter 12 should be considered ‘canon’, as that’s the ending I had in mind the majority of the time. But if you prefer ‘happy’ endings, this may be the one for you.
> 
> …sort of. :)

“How is she?” Fenris asked Lanaya, hands clenched in agitation.

She relaxed as she finished her examination “She is fine, both her and the babes. Weak, as was to be expected, but she should recover with food and time.”

He sagged, overcome with relief, then hesitated to ask, “Babes? Two of them?” When she nodded confirmation with a smile, he pressed on. “When will she wake up?”

“Any moment? Tomorrow? I don’t know,” she added with a helpless shrug. “She needs rest. And when she wakes, she needs to eat. I’ll have food brought in for you.”

“Keeper,” he said with some effort. She paused on her way out to look back at him. “Thank you.”

With a ghost of a smile, she dipped her chin and ducked out.

Merrill squeaked. “You did it, Fenris! I am so sorry I failed her in the Fade again, but you got her out all right.”

Aveline looked uncomfortable. “That’s twice for me, too,” she said, shaking her head. “I should’ve known better, after Varric, but, being in that moment...” She looked away, avoiding Donnic’s gaze.

“Me, too,” Varric echoed. “I knew Bartrand was dead, but seeing him taunting me like that just pissed me off.”

“That was undoubtedly his plan,” Fenris said, without rancor. “I’m just glad it’s over, and Hawke is safe.”

“Whose plan?” Donnic asked.

Fenris grimaced. “Vengeance.”

They went still at that, and Fenris looked up to see them glancing at one another. “Blondie?” Varric asked.

Fenris shook his head. “No. The spirit within him,” he said before lapsing into silence.

Aveline cleared her throat. “We should go back to our camp and let her have some peace. You’ll be okay?”

“Fine,” Fenris replied.

They filed out, throwing backward looks at the two of them as they departed. Grateful for the time alone, he drew his knees up to his chest and frowned thoughtfully.

Both twins had survived.

Spirits usually required a mage host, although those templar abominations were one exception of that. But he couldn’t shake the sense of foreboding remembering the flash of blue in the one called Malcolm’s eyes, or his seeming reaction to Vengeance’s death.

#####

Hawke woke only long enough to eat some of the food left for her before falling back asleep. That was the pattern for the next two days, until she finished eating and sat back with a sigh, studying his face. “What happened?”

He idly stirred the dregs of the soup around the bottom of the bowl, avoiding meeting her eye. “What do you remember?”

“South Reach. The templars.” Her hand went to her forehead and rubbed it in a gesture he remembered from encountering her in the Fade. “The Forest, then…dreams. Nightmares. All the bad things that have happened in my life. But also…good things? Children. A home.” It was her turn to look away. “You coming in and killing them.”

Her words startled him into leaning away. “What?”

She bit her lower lip. “Anders was there. But I guess it was Vengeance,” she said, sidestepping his question.

He pressed. “What do you mean, I killed them?” His voice was harsh, his ire kindled.

Her eyes closed briefly before she turned back. “You killed them. Over and over. But even then…I couldn’t…”

Rage rose in his throat, threatening to choke him. He wished Vengeance was here, Anders, so he could kill him again. He wanted to leave this place, to pace, to fight, to _something_ , just to not feel this helpless—but Hawke needed him. With an effort, he reined in the urge to leave, fingers curling into fists. “I swear I would never do anything to harm them.”

A smile quirked up a corner of her mouth. “I know that. It was hard to tell that in the dream.”

The dream. His jaw clenched and he looked down to his hands resting in his lap. “In the dream, your dream, I saw something that disturbed me.”

“Anders?” she asked uneasily.

He hesitated. “Yes, but we will get back to that.” In halting words, he explained what he had noticed, Malcolm’s eyes flashing blue, as Anders’s did, and the way he reacted when Hawke had stabbed Vengeance, when Carver had not.

Her cheeks were colorless by the time he finished. “You think—“ She paused to consider further. He waited for her to continue. “It is strange that Vengeance could affect me. I’m no mage.”

“There were the templars in Kirkwall,” he reminded her, but he was no more reassured by the thought than she seemed to be.

“Blood magic did that.”

“There is Merr—“

“Stop. No.”

He knew she was probably right, so did as she requested. He chose his words carefully. “I think it is something we need to be aware of. A possibility.”

It was a credit to either her upbringing or her experience that she didn’t deride the idea, merely closed her eyes again with a brief look of grief before she regained her composure. “We’ll just have to deal with it if it happens. I’ve been through too much to borrow trouble.”

He wanted to reach out and take her hand to comfort her, but she’d brought up Anders, and the specter of him kept him from doing it. He’d thought too often the past few days over what he’d seen in the Fade, with Justice--or Anders--acting as father to the boys and...he didn’t want to think of what other role he may have played in the dream scenario to her. “In your dream,” he started then paused, having difficulty speaking his thoughts. “The dream I found you in, you did not seem to know it was Vengeance. Only the a--Anders. You seemed...happy.” His lips curled with remembered anger. Jealousy. Before she could speak, he rushed on. “Then there was the other dream, that night--” He couldn’t continue, but her widened eyes told him she knew of what he spoke. “You were always close, sometimes it seemed you enjoyed his company more than mine, especially there, before the end. Did you--did he--”

He stumbled off, and they sat in silence for the few moments before she put out her hand, uncurling the fingers upwards to reveal her palm. The motion caught the corner of his eye, and he turned to look at it, then her, seeing the invitation to take it writ plain in her face. Hesitantly, he lifted his hand to cover hers, and the fingers folded over to capture his hand lightly. “You, all of you--well, most of you,” she said with a bemused smile that faded as she said with gravity, “had things I was attracted to. Varric had his sense of humor and his outlook on life. Sebastian had serenity,” her smile quirked again, “except when he didn’t. Anders, well, I felt a kind of kinship with Anders. He reminded me in some ways of my father.” He threatened to withdraw his hand, and her fingers tightened, holding him unless he wanted to rip free. He considered it but relinquished, and she continued, “And then there was you. I was attracted to your fierceness, your cunning, your desire to live a free life. And you wanted _me_. Wanted me to be part of it.” She shook her head. “Anders? No, never.”

“Never?” he prodded, not quite ready to believe her.

She gave him a frown, and her voice became clipped with annoyance. “Even he had been interested in me in that way, his possession by Justice would always have been there between us. And it became clear the more I got to know him that, for Anders, his cause was first and foremost. I loved him, like a brother, like my sister, if she’d have lived to see what became of Kirkwall,” she said, tone turning bleak, and it was his turn to squeeze her hand, trying to comfort. “In the end, Vengeance used our friendship as just another tool to achieve his goals, used and discarded. Even if I had spared Anders, I don’t think I could have ever forgiven him for that.” She drew in a ragged breath and let it out in a sigh. “I waited three years for you. How could you even _think_ I would be pining for him, especially now that he’s dead?”

Shame overwhelmed him, and he looked away, although he didn’t loosen his hold on her hand. He felt strength flow through the connection, her touch. “Because you are a beautiful woman,” he finally said when he could speak again. “I never saw you with anyone else, but you might have, could have--” He stuttered to a stop.

“I didn’t,” she said, with such conviction he looked back to her. Her gaze on him was steady. “If you had a crest, I would wear it.”

The thought of that made him smile, and he brought her hand up to his lips. “I am sorry. It seems I continue to act the fool with you. Will you...be patient with me?”

Gently, she curled her fingers into a loose fist and nudged his jaw, miming a punch. She smiled. “As if I haven’t been already?”

#####

Hawke recovered, ready to leave her pallet after a week and complaining about it for three days before Lanaya allowed it.

Fenris was watching Merrill and Aveline fawn over Hawke with the baby things they’d purchased from Master Varathorn when Lanaya pulled him aside and said “I think it would be best for all of them if you were to stay with us for a while, possibly until the babes are born.”

He turned to her in surprise. “You would do that?”

“For you? Yes. You are elvhen. For her? Normally, no, but...these are not normal times. You will have to work to provide for the clan, just as any other Dalish would.”

“What of the others?”

Merrill’s laughter trilled at something Aveline said, her hands going to cover her mouth. Lanaya’s eyes narrowed, turning thoughtful. “Orana, of course, just as you, if she wishes to stay and work with the clan. Merrill, the others…you should perhaps ask if they wish to stay first.”

He nodded, half in a daze. “I...thank you.”

They did wish to, Aveline saying, “Hawke is my family. You would have to throw me out kicking and screaming to keep me away from her while she’s going through this,” and Donnic had nodded in agreement. Varric had made noises about not leaving until the story was done, but Fenris had noticed the way he had been chatting up Varathorn and studying his goods with gold coins glittering in his eyes.

It had taken some convincing, Merrill speaking of Hawke’s services for Marethari and Asha’bellanar, until the clan grudgingly agreed to allow the shemlens and durgenlen to travel with them for a time. The companions from Kirkwall continued to pitch their tents outside the Dalish camp proper, sharing in the work and allowing Hawke to stay under the supervision of Lanaya with Merrill working with her. But there were no more strange incidents, and the sleeping she did do was considered normal.

It was late summer when Hawke’s labor began, and after a fretful night and another half a day, she gave birth, as Fenris expected, to twin boys. He had looked at both of them as they emerged, both black haired, red, and squashed, and wondered which of them was the one Hawke had named Malcolm, which had been Carver. If the dream in the Fade had been a true-telling. If one of them would become a mage, and if so, if Vengeance resided in him, biding his time.

Or if one was simply a mage, and what it would be like to be the father of one. They had discussed that possibility, with magic running in her family and his, but it was one thing to discuss possibilities and quite another to see the potential in a tiny form just entering the world as Lanaya’s First and Merrill bustled around as unobtrusively as they could cleaning them up and swaddling them in soft blankets.

Merrill finished first and brought one of the babes over to Hawke, beaming. “He’s beautiful, Hawke. He came out first, so I’ve put a bit of red cord around his wrist so you can tell them apart. You’ll have to change it when they begin to grow, Lanaya says.”

Hawke gathered him in her arms, smiling wearily as she settled, then looked to Fenris. “What shall we call him?”

Fenris studied the boy’s face, looking for a clue. He saw nothing that would indicate which of the twins he was, grey irises peeping out from under half-lidded eyes. “I don’t know which this is,” he admitted.

“We have to call him _something_ ,” she said quietly, with a tired grin. “Choose what feels right.”

He covered the crown of the boy’s head with his hand and made a snap decision. “Carver.”

“That’s a good name,” Merrill said. “Wasn’t that your brother’s name, Hawke?”

“Yes…” Hawke smiled. “He’d probably have fits to know his nephew was half-elven, but it pleases me.” She kissed Carver’s forehead, and Fenris put his arm around her waist, his head on her shoulder, in awe of this child.

“Fenris,” Lanaya said, breaking into the moment. He looked up to see her offering the second boy—Malcolm, he corrected himself--to him.

“Take him,” Hawke urged gently.

His arm dropped away from her waist. “What?”

She leaned into him to nudge. “Hold him.”

Fenris took him from Lanaya’s arms, trying to position the small bundle in his arms the way he’d seen Hawke do it, but it seemed awkward, until she helped settle Malcolm’s head in the crook of Fenris’s elbow. Malcolm squirmed, and Fenris wrapped his other arm around to prevent him from falling away. He asked in alarm, “What if I drop him?

“You won’t,” Hawke said with such certainty warmth welled up in him.

Cradling him, awe crept in, and Fenris examined Malcolm’s face as if to memorize it, from the thin layer of dark hair on his head, the little crescents of his eyebrows, thick eyelashes resting on his cheeks, tiny nose, the pursed lips, the delicacy of his features. He loosened a hand to run a finger around his ear, tracing the faint point that kept it from being round, and therefore truly human like Hawke’s. Malcolm didn’t stir, sleeping deeply, and Lanaya and Merrill withdrew to give them some privacy.

“Your son,” Hawke said in reverent undertone, snuggling against Fenris’s side.

“My son,” he repeated, feeling the reality of it settle on him like a weight that he found, once there, was welcome. So many things he wanted to say, but all he could tell her was, “Thank you.”

“Well, it’s not exactly like I did anything special, I—“

“Marian?” he interrupted.

“Yes, love?”

Her use of the word set off another burst of emotion in his chest that threatened to overwhelm him. He composed himself by kissing her forehead. “Thank you for giving me a family.”

#####

It was three weeks later that Hawke announced herself fit to travel, children or no children. “Besides, if we don’t leave now, the snows will catch us.”

“Where will we go?”

She put Carver to her shoulder, rubbing his back while Malcolm dozed on a blanket on the ground. “Gwaren, first. Coming to Ferelden was a mistake, you were right. We can catch a ship there to somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“Where would you suggest? There’s no rush to answer. We don’t need to decide until we get there.”

It took them a day to prepare, purchasing supplies with their dwindling coin and feasting with the Dalish that night. After returning to their tents, Merrill drew Hawke aside, shifting on her feet nervously. Hawke watched her with some bemusement, then prompted, “What is it?”

“We’re not going with you,” she blurted out.

Fenris’s eyebrows climbed, but it was Hawke who asked, “You’re staying? You and Orana?”

Merrill twisted her fingers together. “I’ve had long talks with Lanaya about what happened in the Free Marches. I can’t undo what I did, but I can try to make up for it. She said Keeper Zathrian also used blood magic, but that he was basically a good man. She’s willing to let me stay and learn more about controlling my magic, as long as I promise not to use it again.” She met Hawke’s gaze with luminous eyes. “I have learned so much from you, Hawke. You were right, I should have listened sooner.”

Hawke drew her into a one-armed embrace, hugging her tightly. “The Maker—I guess the Creators,” she corrected herself with a wry smile, “watch over you.”

The rest of them left the next morning, leaving Merrill and Orana holding hands as the Dalish bade them farewell. Fenris caught Varric wiping a hand across his cheeks. “Are you okay?”

“Just something in my eye, is all.”

“I hear daisy pollen is bad for that.”

Varric guffawed. “Me, too, Elf. Me, too.”

The nights had started to become chilly, the southern autumn firmly marching towards winter by the time they reached Gwaren several days later. They found shelter in a rundown inn near the docks, where Aveline asked over dinner in the common room, “Hawke, what are your plans?”

Hawke looked to Fenris, who nodded once and said to Aveline, “To go somewhere else, if we can sail out.”

Aveline grimaced and glanced at Donnic before saying, “We won’t be accompanying you.”

“What?” Hawke asked in shock.

“I love you like the sister I never had,” Aveline said, “but we want to have a family, and I can’t do that on the run. They’re looking for you, not me. Gwaren should be big enough that we can disappear into it without notice.”

“Are you…?” Hawke started, trailing off with eyes widened, and squealed when Aveline smiled ruefully and nodded. “That’s wonderful!”

Donnic put an arm around Aveline’s shoulders. She said, “I just wish our children could grow up together.”

“Me, too,” Hawke said, reaching across the table to squeeze Aveline’s callused hand.

“Well,” Varric said, interrupting the maternal bonding, “I guess this is as good a time as any to say that I won’t be coming with you, either, wherever it is. Unless that’s Kirkwall, which I seriously doubt.” His blunt fingers traced the grain of the table. “I miss being a merchant. My house is probably a mess. And I have a new contract to trade goods with Varathorn. _No_ one in all the Free Marches has an agreement like that. I’ll be rolling in it.” He took a long drink from his ale mug, then plunked it down on the table. “It’s been a year, long enough that I should be able to slip back in.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Fenris asked.

“Elf, I think leaving my house to those idiot cousins of mine is the most foolish thing I could do. Not following you around the back end of the world, mind you, because I’m not _that_ stupid. We needed to get out of there for a while. But I need to go back now.”

“Varric, if you go back, the templars will find you. You’re too well known there,” Hawke cautioned.

“And I can also buy protection, without having to worry about the rest of you. Trust me, Hawke, I was taking care of myself long before I ever ran into you in Hightown.”

The grin she gave him was laced with sorrow. “I do trust you. I just worry about you.”

“I know,” Varric said, patting her hand. “That’s what makes you you.”

Varric found a ship bound for Denerim two days later, and they went out to the docks to say goodbye. He exchanged a handshake with Donnic then looked up at Aveline. “You still scare the shit out of me, Red. You’re going to be a terror of a mother to your children.”

“They’ll grow up with good morals, obey the law, and a healthy respect for dwarven merchants.”

Varric sighed. “They’re all going to blame _me_ for that loss of coin.”

Balancing Carver in one arm, something he’d had to get better at quickly over the several weeks, Fenris offered a hand out. “Take care, Varric.”

“You too, Fenris. I’d say take care of her, but I know you will. Now.”

Fenris’s eyebrows went up, then he quirked a smile. “I shall.”

Aveline took Malcolm from Hawke so that she could throw both arms around Varric, who patted her on the back. “I know, I know. Women adore me, men want to be me. Except maybe you. You were the best story I’ve ever told, Hawke.”

“I was just trying to live,” she said, sniffling.

“Yeah, but the story is the good parts around the living. Stop having good parts, now that I’m not around to tell them, eh?”

She laughed around her tears. “If the rest of my life can be dull and boring, I’ll do it, just for you.”

“That’s my girl,” Varric said, with an odd strain to his normally mellifluous voice. He hitched his pack up on his shoulder and walked up the plank, pausing to turn and wave, then disappeared onto the deck.

Several more days passed and Hawke and he still lingered. Donnic was hired on as a guard on the docks, and he and Aveline moved into a tiny house nearby, little more than a shack, but it was clean and it was theirs. At the beginning of the second week, Aveline stopped by the tavern and demanded, “What are you waiting for?”

“You’ll see,” Hawke replied with a veiled smile.

The mystery resolved itself another week later when a boat came into dock, and a familiar captain swung into the tavern. “Hello, Hawke.”

“Glad you could make it, Isabela.”

They caught up over dinner, Isabela exclaiming over Aveline and Donnic’s news and threatening yearly returns to corrupt their offspring, and Aveline threatening to fit a chastity belt on Isabela and toss the key into the sea. Isabela also cooed over the babies. “What’s his name?” she said, looking over Fenris’s shoulder.

“Carver,” Hawke said while re-positioning Malcolm on her lap.

“He’s a cutie.” She glanced between Hawke and Fenris and grinned. “They’re probably going to grow up pretty, too.”

“They’re a bit young for you,” Fenris said, flexing his free hand and studying the tattoos on the back. “And have a protective father.”

“Spoilsport,” Isabela pouted.

Aveline slid into the gap of the conversation, “So, Isabela, what brings you to Gwaren? Pleasure cruise in fall through templar-infested waters?”

“She did.” Isabela pointed at Hawke. “The templars in Denerim did follow me for a time, just as you planned, but they got bored when I put in at Rivain. That, or they didn’t want to deal with those who don’t follow their faith. The Rivaini get so stuffy about things like that.”

“You’re Rivaini,” Aveline pointed out.

“And do I never not get stuffy about the templars?” Isabela countered with a wink.

“Point.”

Hawke said with a dip of her chin, “Thanks for that,”

“Tit for tat,” Isabela said with a negligent wave. “I’m on the sea again, it’s no real hardship.” To Aveline, she said, “She asked me to put in here in the fall, just in case, so here I am.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“I thought as much. Where to?”

“It’ll have to wait until we’re on the ship. I don’t want the wrong ears hearing.”

“You’re getting suspicious in your old age,” Isabela said. “It’s about damn time.”

It was three days before they could leave, waiting for Isabela to off-load her cargo and swap out crew. With time growing short, Hawke and Aveline spent as much time together as possible, Fenris and Donnic visited the tavern every evening, not really talking, but playing Diamondback or Wicked Grace with Isabela until the small hours of the morning.

They gathered on the docks in the pre-dawn, an icy fog dampening the beginning of the morning to add to their despondent mood. Hawke and Aveline embraced, and Fenris grasped forearms with Donnic before Isabela took her due. “It’s been a long and strange road, Hawke,” Aveline said. “I would have stayed with you, if I could.”

“I know, Aveline,” she replied. “But you and Donnic have sacrificed enough as it is. Have your family. I know how important it is to you.”

“ _You_ are my family,” Aveline said fiercely, eyes glinting.

Hawke threw her arm around Aveline’s neck, hugging tightly. “I know,” she said, voice scratchy. “And maybe someday we’ll come back and find you.”

“Not if I find you first,” Aveline said in warning, stepping back into Donnic’s waiting arms.

They stayed on the docks, watching as the ship sailed out until the mist swallowed them from view. Fenris stood on the deck with Carver in one arm and the other around Hawke's waist and turned and kissed her shoulder while she soothed a fussy Malcolm. She said in a wistful voice, “I can’t imagine I’ll ever be back here.”

He hesitated before replying. “Probably not.”

They climbed the stairs to join Isabela on the poop deck, watching the activity on the ship in silence for some time until weak sunlight broke through the clouds, beginning to burn off the fog.

“Where to?” Isabela asked, handing the wheel over to the helmsmen.

Hawke glanced over at Fenris, and he nodded, answering, “Rivain.”

Isabela grimaced, before realization cleared her expression. “Right. Elves, and no Andrastians.”

He smiled. “Correct.”

“I was just there,” she complained. “And you’re going to make me winter there. The things I do for our friendship, Hawke.” She put her fingers to her mouth and sounded a piercing whistle. “Oy, you blighters! Put your backs into it! We’re making for sunny skies and a warm winter!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank everyone again for reading taking the time to read this. I get the ideas because I enjoy them, but I write because I want to share those with people—and like many fanfic authors, it’s the reader feedback that keeps me going.
> 
> I also like talking about fanfic, and writing, and stories with people, so I wanted to encourage you, if you’ve read this and have any questions, any questions at all either about the story—maybe something that was unclear, or you’re curious about--or for me about the writing of it, to take the opportunity to ask it here.
> 
> This is also the place for constructive criticism. I want to improve as a writer, and feedback is the only way by which to do it. If something didn’t work for you, please let me know why. If you think I got the characterization off, let me know. Pacing, tone, whatever. Especially if you’re willing to dialogue about it.
> 
> Otherwise, I hope you enjoyed it, that you did read this far. :) --Tersa


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